The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Friday released a video of the Chandrayaan-3 rover Pragyan ramping down from the lander to the surface of the Moon. The 30-second video shared by the ISRO was taken by the imager camera installed on the lander 'Vikram'. ". and here is how the Chandrayaan-3 Rover ramped down from the Lander to the Lunar surface," ISRO captioned the video that was shared on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The Indian space agency also revealed that the rover has successfully traversed a distance of about eight metres and its payloads have been turned on. "All payloads on the propulsion module, lander module, and rover are performing nominally," it added. The keenly awaited video comes two days after India scripted history as its Chandrayaan-3 unmanned spacecraft made a soft-landing on the Moon's surface, making it only the fourth country to achieve this and the first to reach the uncharted south pole of the Moon. "Rover payloads LIBS and APXS are turned on," the space agency said in a post on X. While the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) is aiming at deriving the chemical composition of the lunar surface, the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) will attempt to determine the elemental composition of lunar soil and rocks around the lunar landing site.
