ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 pinged by retroreflector from NASA spacecraft

“We have shown that we can detect our retroreflector on the surface from the Moon’s orbit,” said Xiaoli Sun, who led the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which conducted the mission as part of a partnership between NASA and the Indian Ocean. Developed retroreflector on Vikram in 1977. Space Research Organization (ISRO), as reported by PTI.

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“The next step is to improve the technology so that it can become routine for missions that want to use these retroreflectors in the future,” the report said.

NASA announced that a laser beam was emitted and bounced back and forth between the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and an instrument on the Vikram lander, about the size of an Oreo. This success paves the way for a new method of precisely pinpointing targets on the lunar surface.

The lander was about 100 kilometers away from LRO, close to Manzinus Crater in the moon’s south pole region, when LRO transmitted a laser pulse toward it on December 12 last year.

Upon detecting light reflected from a small NASA retroreflector on Vikram, the orbiter confirmed the success of NASA’s technique. The traditional method of sending a laser pulse toward an object and measuring the time it takes for the light to return is often used to track Earth-orbiting satellites from the ground.

The scientists emphasized that employing this technology in reverse, where laser pulses are transferred from a mobile spacecraft to a stationary spacecraft to determine its precise location, has many applications on the Moon. .

Measuring only 2 inches or 5 centimeters in width, NASA’s compact but robust retroreflector, known as the Laser Retroreflector Array, incorporates eight quartz-corner-cube prisms arranged within a dome-shaped aluminum frame.

Known for its simplicity and durability, this appliance requires neither electricity nor maintenance, with a lifespan spanning decades. Its design enables the retroreflector to effectively reflect light coming from any direction back to its source, as outlined by NASA.

Such retroreflectors find applications in a variety of scientific and exploratory endeavors and have been used on the Moon since the Apollo era.

By redirecting light back to Earth, these suitcase-sized retroreflectors reveal that the Moon is gradually moving away from our planet at a rate of 3.8 centimeters per year, according to information provided by the US space agency.

In response to this development, ISRO said that the Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) on the Chandrayaan-3 lander has started acting as a fiducial point – a precisely located marker for reference – on the Moon.

“NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) achieved laser ranging measurements using LRA by successfully detecting signals reflected from it on December 12, 2023. Ranging used the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) on LRO. Observations Chandra The time occurred during the night, with LRO moving towards the east of Chandrayaan-3,” the Indian space agency said.

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Published: Jan 23, 2024, 08:15 am IST