Mark Megahan
India sent their Pragyaan Lunar rover down the ramp and onto the surface of the Moon. From there, it’s off in search of ice cubes. It doesn’t need a cold drink after a tricky landing, the team home on earth thinks there could be deposits of frozen water in the vicinity, which are crucial for human settlement later.
Pragyaan rover rolls out
Video was just made public of India’s Pragyaan rover descending it’s access ramp and rolling out onto the surface of the Moon. Recently, the nation of India became the fourth country to safely land equipment on Luna.
The Russian’s most recent attempt didn’t go as well and the surface has a new crater because of it. Japan is expected to touch down shortly and they have their fingers crossed that theirs will be a smooth landing.
The rover arrived aboard the Vikram lander engineered by the “Indian Space Research Organization.” This is the first time anyone tried to land near the south pole.
They chose the location for “a tantalizing opportunity to examine a region believed to be rich in water ice.” They picked the “key site for future efforts to establish a permanent presence on the lunar surface.”
The video released officially depicts the 57-pound rover rolling down to the lunar surface on its six wheels. The name Pragyaan is Sanskrit for “wisdom.”
They also released a second video of the explorer rolling around at the foot of the landing craft. The spectacular images are yet to come.
An incredible feat
The accomplishment is described as “an incredible feat that signals a new era for international space exploration.” They don’t always go this smooth. “As many failed attempts have shown, softly landing a spacecraft on the lunar surface is anything but easy.”
The Russians just learned that lesson the hard way. Their Luna-25 spacecraft mission “ended in disaster.” They had an “emergency situation” and “crashed into the Moon” before they could deploy their rover.
India is hoping to confirm that the Moon’s “craggy polar regions could hold vast stores of water, particularly in shadowed corners of its massive craters.”
The thing which is really grabbing everyone’s attention is the fact that “India just became a big part of our future efforts to establish a permanent presence on the Moon.” Their rover is roaming over some prime real estate. That, experts say, shifts “the international balance of power on our planet’s natural satellite.”
Japan’s space agency JAXA is already lining up an attempt to land on the Moon with its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM). That one hasn’t launched yet. Legal status of lunar holdings hasn’t been firmly settled yet.
Diplomats are working for shared and equal access to the Moon and it’s resources but the reality is that whoever gets a foothold first will have a huge advantage in negotiations. Especially if they bring along the gear for a maglev catapult set-up. You don’t need nukes when you can throw rocks. As Funkmaster George Clinton likes to say, “Up is just a place to throw down from.“
