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India’s Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter Captures Pictures of Moon’s Surface

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India's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter snapped photos of the moon's southern polar region. (Photo Credit: ISRO / Twitter)

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) recently uploaded photos of the lunar surface and they show off the moon’s rugged topography.

The photos, which were captured by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, were shared amid efforts to contact the silent Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander, Business Today reported. Even though the Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander was unresponsive, the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter is still going strong with its lunar tasks.

Images from the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter’s high resolution camera (OHRC) were taken from a height of 100 km (62 miles). According to an ISRO tweet, the image above was acquired at 4:38 IST on September 5. A section of the Boguslawsky E Crater and an area of the moon’s polar region are the main focuses of the high-resolution photo.

“OHRC is an important new tool for lunar topographic studies of select regions,” the ISRO said in the tweet. “With a spatial resolution of 25 cm from a 100 km [62-mile] orbit and a swath of 3 km [1.9 miles], it provides the sharpest images ever from a lunar orbiter platform.”

Photo Credit: ISRO

Photos were not the only data released from the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter: ISRO described the function of the CLASS instrument aboard the orbiter, which is designed to detect direct signatures of elements present in the lunar soil. Within its first few days of observation in September, CLASS could detect charged particles. However, more detailed studies and observations will be needed to study the “dance of electrons to the music of magnetic fields” around the moon.

The Chandrayaan-2 orbiter’s photos follow tech complications with the mission’s Vikram lander. India lost contact with the Vikram lander during its historic moon landing attempt on September 7. ISRO’s team is still analyzing data to see what went wrong with the lunar touchdown and they still haven’t been able to communicate with the Vikram lander at this time, Space.com noted.

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