A screenshot reveals the floor of the Moon captured by Lander Imager Camera aboard ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 earlier than its profitable landing.
With the Chandrayaan-3’s lander module Vikram efficiently making a landing on the moon and the rover Pragyan ramping down, one digital camera developed by Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems (LEOS) in Bengaluru has already made an impression whereas one other could be guiding the Pragyan because it traverses the moon’s floor.
The Lander Horizontal Velocity Camera (LHVC), which is onboard the Vikram, has already clicked the primary picture of the moon throughout its descent on the lunar floor on Wednesday
LHVC, which was initially developed for the Chandrayaan-2 mission, has additionally been adopted for the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
“LHVC has an important role of measuring horizontal velocity during the Lander descent phase. It does a complex algorithm calculating the velocity in which the lander is travelling. This instrument provides important information during the descent, ” mentioned Subhalakshmi Krishnamoorthy, who led a group of scientists at LEOS to develop the digital camera.
The second digital camera is the Navigation digital camera (NAVCAM) and two of them would be the eyes of the Rover, guiding it because it traverses the moon’s floor.
Both NAVCAMs are fitted within the entrance of the rover for path planning and impediment avoidance for the rover.
“The Pragyan Rover has two Navigation cameras fitted in the front of the rover to navigate the Rover in the lunar terrain. NAVCAM-Left & NAVCAM -Right help in path planning and obstacle avoidance, to ensure that there is no rock, there is no obstacle, there is no pit etc., in the path. It is like a human being or robot having eyes, so wherever the rover is going to move there is a path planning which is done based on the stereo images from Navcams” mentioned Ms Krishnamoorthy, the previous Deputy director of ISRO. She attributed the success to the honest and devoted exhausting work of her group members.
She added that each the cameras had been developed for the Chandrayaan-2 lander and rover. However, the Chandrayaan 2 mission led to a failure when throughout the descent, the Vikram lander crashed on the lunar floor. It subsequently misplaced communication with the bottom stations.
