Chandrayaan-3: India takes a walk on the moon as ISRO confirms rover Pragyan's rollout

After India's Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed on the moon's south pole on Wednesday evening, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has confirmed that the rover placed with the craft has rolled out onto the lunar surface.

In a tweet, the space agency confirmed that the Pragyan rover had exited the Vikram lander.



A PTI report says that the rover will now roam the lunar surface, collecting data for the Indian space agency, marking another succesful stage for ISRO on its latest moon mission.

President Droupadi Murmu congratulated ISRO for the successful deployment of Pragyan rover.

"I once again congratulate the ISRO team and all fellow citizens for successful deployment of Pragyan-rover from inside Vikram-lander. Its rolling out a few hours after the landing of Vikram marked the success of yet another stage of Chandrayan 3. I look forward with excitement, alongside my fellow citizens and scientists to the information and analyses that Pragyan will acquire and enrich our understanding of the moon," President Droupadi Murmu posted on X.

On Wednesday, around 6pm India time, the Vikram lander touched down on the moon, completing a soft landing and making India the first to reach the south pole of the moon.

The successful touchdown of the Chandrayaan-3 mission came just days after a Russian lander crashed in the same region.

It also comes four years after the previous Indian lunar mission failed during final descent, in what was seen at the time as a huge setback for its space programme.

According to the space agency, the six-wheeled Pragyan rover is designed to descend from the lander's belly, using one of its side panels as a ramp.

ISRO's machines - the lander and the rover - are designed to operate for two weeks, which is approximately one lunar daylight period. However, the agency is keeping hope alive that they might function ffor another lunar day.

The rover would study the surface of the moon through its payloads APXS - Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer - to derive the chemical composition and infer mineralogical composition to further enhance understanding of the lunar surface.

"After powered descent (of lander) on to the landing site, there will be deployment of ramp and rover coming out. After this all the experiments will take place one after the other - all of which have to be completed in just one day on the moon, which is 14 days," ISRO Chairman S Somnath had earlier said.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk hailed the landing as "super cool".

Getting to the moon was a feat in itself, with ISRO taking much longer to reach the Moon than America's Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days.

Chandrayaan-3 was launched on a less-powerful rocket and had to orbit the Earth several times to gain speed before embarking on its month-long journey.

In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to put a craft into orbit around Mars and plans to send a probe towards the sun in September. ISRO is slated to launch a three-day crewed mission into Earth's orbit by next year.

It also plans a joint mission with Japan to send another probe to the Moon by 2025 and an orbital mission to Venus within the next two years.