What was interesting to me, and I talked about a few times here is this dhaga was LRA ( Laser Retroreflector Array), supplied by NASA .. see my one of my earlier post below for background:
Well according to NASA and reports in newspapers:
Even though Vikram's batteries did not survive past lunar night-- Vikram lander started serving as a location marker near lunar south pole
Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) pings on Isro’s Vikram lander. The Chandrayaan-3 lander was 100km away from LRO, near Manzinus crater in the Moon’s South Pole region. The successful experiment paves the way for accurately locating targets on the moon's surface. NASA’s Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) was fitted on the Vikram lander under international collaboration with ISRO. LRA serves as a simple but robust method to reflect incoming light from any direction back to its source.
My post:
Well according to NASA and reports in newspapers:
Even though Vikram's batteries did not survive past lunar night-- Vikram lander started serving as a location marker near lunar south pole
Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) pings on Isro’s Vikram lander. The Chandrayaan-3 lander was 100km away from LRO, near Manzinus crater in the Moon’s South Pole region. The successful experiment paves the way for accurately locating targets on the moon's surface. NASA’s Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) was fitted on the Vikram lander under international collaboration with ISRO. LRA serves as a simple but robust method to reflect incoming light from any direction back to its source.
My post:
One of the CY3' Vikram/Pragyan pay load interesting to me is LRA ( Laser Retroreflector Array), supplied by NASA. This is passive instrument (requires no batteries etc), weighs only about 20 gms (about 3 gm on the moon). LRA consists of eight tiny retroreflectors affixed to a hemispherical platform attached to the Vikram. The device, when struck by laser light, reflects the light back to its source to reveal its location - precise location! The device, I think is too small to be used by lasers from earth (at least now) but from PM (or other space-crafts) can be use it to locate it exactly even if everything else is not working.
LRAs can be used as precision landmarks for guidance and navigation during the lunar day or night. In the future, by placing a few LRAs around a specific site they can guide arriving robotic or human-carrying landers to a safe, pinpoint landing.
Other payloads: ChaSTE, ILSA, Langmuir Probe, APXS, LIBS etc have been talked about but I have not heard much about LRA so posting it here.
). LRA consists of eight tiny retroreflectors affixed to a hemispherical platform attached to the Vikram. The device, when struck by laser light, reflects the light back to its source to reveal its location - precise location! The device, I think is too small to be used by lasers from earth (at least now) but from PM (or other space-crafts) can be use it to locate it exactly even if everything else is not working. Statistics: Posted by Amber G. — 20 Jan 2024 01:56