Vikram Lander Raised Lot of Dust During Moon Landing, Created Halo

When the Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan-3 mission made a delicate touchdown on the moon it raised so much of mud that led to creation of a vibrant patch, known as because the ejecta halo, across the spacecraft, the ISRO stated on Friday.

According to a analysis paper printed within the Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, scientists at ISRO used the Orbiter High Resolution Camera (OHRC) onboard the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter to check the lunar floor hours earlier than and after the soft-landing of Vikram lander on the moon on August 23.

“During the action of descent stage thrusters and the consequent landing, a significant amount of lunar surficial epiregolith material got ejected, resulting in a reflectance anomaly or ‘ejecta halo’,” scientists on the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) stated within the paper.

They estimated that the touchdown occasion had ejected 2.09 tonnes of lunar regolith over 108.4 sq. metre space.

The scientists examined pre-and post-landing photographs of the touchdown website acquired from the OHRC onboard Chandrayaan-2 orbiter. “The Vikram lander’s position is seen as a centrally located brightened spot on the image due to reflection from the lander’s on-body solar panels.

The shadow of the lander is seen as an elongated oval-shaped dark patch towards the left of the lander,” they stated within the paper.

“Associated with these two features is the veneer of the ejecta halo, which appears as an irregular bright patch surrounding the lander, as seen clearly in the post-landing OHRC image,” they reported. According to the scientists, learning soil erosion as a consequence of rocket exhaust on the Moon is essential because the ‘off-surface ejecta’ materials can probably threaten lander/rover onboard devices.

During the landing section of the Vikram lander, the ejecta displacement could possibly be seen from the lander’s Landing Image Camera (LIC).

The ejecta halo phenomenon has been documented within the case of virtually all lunar landings, extra so from the Apollo touchdown missions which had significantly heavy landers.

The first documented proof of the ejecta displacement was in the course of the Apollo 11 mission when astronaut Buzz Aldrin commented “picking up some dust” when the Eagle lander touched down on the lunar floor on July 20, 1969. During the Apollo-11 mission de-brief, Aldrin stated he seen that the lander was disturbing the mud on the floor and it was one thing lower than 100 toes from the lunar floor.

(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is printed from a syndicated information company feed – PTI)