Chandrayaan-3 | “10 days left, race against time now…” ISRO official briefs on ongoing experiments

Nilesh M Desai, the Director of the Space Applications Centre (SAC) briefed on the observations from Chandra's Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) payload on Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander. Earlier on August 27, taking to X, ISRO shared that ChaSTE measured the temperature of the lunar south pole’s topsoil. Four days after the historic successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the south pole of lunar surface ISRO shared the first observation from the ChaSTE payload onboard Vikram Lander. ChaSTE measured the temperature profile of lunar topsoil around the pole, to understand the thermal behaviour of the Moon’s surface. In the history of space science, this is the first time that temperature profiling is being done around the south pole of the Moon. Chandrayaan-3 profiled the soil of the south pole of the Moon, its temperature variation up to 10 cm beneath the surface. Taking to X, ISRO shared graph illustrates temperature variations of lunar surface/near-surface at various depths, as recorded during the probe’s penetration.