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August 23, 2023

Chandrayaan-3 Makes Historic Touchdown on the Moon

The successful lunar landing of the Chandrayaan-3 mission makes India only the fourth country to achieve the feat

By Jatan Mehta

Onlookers wave Indian flags while watching the launch of the nation’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission.

R.SATISH BABU/AFP via Getty Images

BENGALURU, India—Quiet moments of nail-biting tension gave way to cheers of joy in the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) mission control center as the space agency sent its lunar lander—and India—into the annals of history. On August 23 at 12:33 P.M. UTC India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission’s robotic lander, named Vikram, touched down on the moon near its south pole. Launched on July 14, Chandrayaan-3 was the result of ISRO doubling down on its bet on lunar landing after the unfortunate crash of its Chandrayaan-2 mission in 2019. With the spacecraft now safely on the moon, ISRO’s efforts have paid off, and India has become the fourth country to achieve a soft lunar landing, following the former Soviet Union, the U.S. and China.

Chandrayaan-3’s entire lunar descent had to be fully autonomous. During this crucial stage of the mission, signals take about three seconds to go from the lander to Earth and back again—a delay too long for earthbound ISRO engineers to reliably guide the landing. So Vikram’s task was to reduce its high orbital velocity to zero such that it would stay as close to its intended trajectory as possible, all the way until a safe touchdown. To do so, it needed to orchestrate the firing of its engines based on continuous measurements of distance, velocity and orientation.

To stick the landing this time around, ISRO built far more redundancies and safeguards into Chandrayaan-3 than it had for Chandrayaan-2. In an August 5 talk detailing these changes, ISRO’s chief S. Somanath emphasized how Chandrayaan-3 carried more fuel and a better guidance, navigation and control system to correct even major deviations from the intended paths. “There were improvements to 21 subsystems for Chandrayaan-3. These changes have been reinforced by numerous helicopter- and crane-based ground tests,” says Nilesh Desai , director of ISRO’s Space Applications Center (SAC) in Ahmedabad, India.

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Evidently, these improvements have culminated in the triumphant touchdown of Chandrayaan-3. This success wasn’t a given, especially when considering that four out of the previous six lunar landing attempts within the past five years have failed. The latest failure occurred on August 19, when Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft misfired its engines and crashed into the moon —a brutal reminder that getting to the lunar surface in one piece remains risky. Luna-25 thus joins the ruins of the Israel-based company SpaceIL’s Beresheet , India’s Chandrayaan-2 and the private Japanese firm ispace’s Hakuto-R spacecraft. Thankfully, at least Chandrayaan-3’s outcome has instead followed those of China’s Chang’e 4 and Chang’e 5 landers, the only other recent successes.

“We now have a tremendous responsibility to inspire India and the world at levels no less than this landing,” said Sankaran Muthusamy, director of the U. R. Rao Satellite Center (URSC), the ISRO center that led the construction and integration of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft and mission.

How Chandrayaan-3 Made It to the Moon

Chandrayaan-3’s about 19-minute-long lunar descent comprised four major phases. The first, the “rough braking” phase, began when the spacecraft was 30 kilometers above the moon in its orbit and about 750 km downrange from its landing site. By firing all of its four 800-newton main engines for about 12 minutes until it was at a 7-km altitude, Chandrayaan-3 reduced its high horizontal velocity of about 1.7 kilometers per second by some 80 percent.

Next came a brief but crucial 10-second “attitude hold” phase, wherein the lander stabilized itself using its eight smaller thrusters to gain a steady view of the looming lunar surface for its various landing sensors .

For height measurements, Chandrayaan-3 relied on two altimeters, one using lasers and the other using microwaves. While laser altimeters are commonly employed by several lunar landers, they can report anomalous heights at times if, say, a lander passes over mountainous terrain or large craters. “Instead the microwave altimeter’s wider footprint allowed Chandrayaan-3 to better tolerate abrupt changes in altitude,” explains Priyanka Mehrotra of SAC, who is lead system designer of Chandrayaan-3’s Ka-Band microwave altimeter.

Where Past Landings Faltered

Chandrayaan-3’s redundant altimetry is especially pertinent because of the role laser altimetry played during the failed April 25 touchdown of ispace’s first lunar lander . As that lander passed over the rim of the Atlas Crater to approach the target landing site that lay within, its laser altimeter correctly reported an increased elevation of roughly 3 km, corresponding to the crater’s depth. But onboard software designed to filter out certain abrupt values to keep the ispace lander’s motion stable rejected the measurement as erroneous. The Japanese lander, thinking it was closer to the surface than it really was, continued decelerating slowly until it ran out of fuel and fell to a ruinous crash landing.

It was during the attitude hold phase that Chandrayaan-2 faltered. Its engines provided a slightly greater thrust than expected because of an inadequately functioning thrust control valve, which accumulated navigation errors over time. ISRO had designed the onboard computer to correct such “off-nominal” paths only after the attitude hold phase ended. But the deviation quickly grew to be so large that the lander couldn’t correct it in time despite its ability to throttle its thrust.

In response, ISRO ensured that Chandrayaan-3 could determine and correct such deviations from its intended trajectory far faster than its failed predecessor. Chandrayaan-3’s lander also used a new instrument called a laser doppler velocimeter (LDV) to navigate more precisely in the first place. “While there are other ways for a lunar lander to measure its velocity, an LDV provides a direct measurement of velocity with respect to the ground, which allows a lander to greatly reduce accumulation of navigation errors,” says William Coogan , lunar lander chief engineer at Firefly Aerospace, a private company that has partnered with NASA via the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to deliver science and technology payloads to the moon in 2024 and 2026 ,.

A Fine Hover or Two

After its fraught attitude hold phase, Chandrayaan-3 entered a three-minute “fine braking” phase in which it used only two of its four main engines to descend up to roughly 850 meters above the moon’s surface and briefly hover there. This pause gave the lander a chance to capture pictures of the surface and compare them to preloaded onboard satellite images to determine whether it was above its desired landing region.

“Chandrayaan-3’s target landing zone spans four by 2.5 kilometers. ISRO scientists and engineers divided it into 3,900 equal-sized subsections, meticulously assessed the safety level of each for a landing and loaded it into the lander as reference information,” Desai says. At this point, Chandrayaan-3 must have taken one of these two decisions: If it found itself above this predetermined landing zone, the onboard computer would have identified the safest feasible subsection area, then accordingly proceeded toward touchdown. If Chandrayaan 3 found itself elsewhere, it would have proceeded with an autonomous landing based on self-identified hazards from its imagery instead of the preprogrammed subsection-based landing. Confirmation of which decision was taken will be known after ISRO determines the landing site.

In the final “terminal descent” phase, Chandrayaan-3 lowered itself to about 150 meters above the surface and then hovered again for about half a minute to assess the area below for landing hazards. At this point, since the surface right below the lander didn’t look safe, the lander sought a safer adjacent area and deviated to touchdown there.

“The processing system for hazard avoidance was sped up for Chandrayaan-3 to make the lander’s decision-making during the critical final phases significantly faster than Chandrayaan-2,” says Rinku Agrawal of SAC, who led the team that developed the processing unit of the hazard detection and avoidance system.

“Hazard detection and avoidance allows for a critical divert maneuver if needed during the final moments to ensure a safe touchdown,” says Ander Solorzano , flight director of aerospace company Astrobotic Technology’s first moon landing mission, which will carry NASA CLPS and international payloads.

Finally, on touchdown, sensors on the lander’s legs triggered the shutdown of its main engines. Chandrayaan-3 now stands tall on the moon.

ISRO designed the lander’s legs to absorb most of the mechanical shock from the touchdown. The agency tested the legs on lunar simulant test beds on Earth to ensure that the lander could tolerate a high vertical velocity of three meters per second—and even a horizontal velocity of one meter per second if it were to touch down askew.

“The touchdown was smooth; the vertical velocity was notably less than even the nominal upper bound of 2 meters per second,” said ISRO chief S. Somanath in a post-landing press event.

Chandrayaan-3 landed near the lunar south pole shortly after local sunrise. Doing so maximizes the mission’s surface operations lifetime to an entire period of lunar daylight (14 Earth days) because the lander and the rover it will deploy are both solar-powered. To begin Chandrayaan-3’s surface science mission , Vikram will activate its four onboard instruments and deploy the rover via a ramp to start exploring the geologically rich landing region .

India’s Next Moonshot

Chandrayaan-3 feeds into the global frenzy of sending hardware to the moon, particularly to its south pole. The U.S.’s upcoming Artemis crewed missions, China’s Chang’e robotic craft and the majority of other governmental as well as private endeavors (such as those under NASA’s CLPS program) plan to explore this valuable lunar region. They eventually aim to extract its water ice and other resources to sustain long-duration missions and perhaps even to commercialize aspects of such operations.

It was thus quite the timing when, on June 21, India signed the Artemis Accords , a U.S.-led framework for cooperative lunar exploration. As a signatory, India can now accelerate its lunar endeavors by better collaborating with the U.S. and other signatory nations. Astrobotic CEO John Thornton says, “I’m encouraged by India’s signing of the accords. It’s certainly a signal for extended partnerships and co-developments between the two countries. The more we can do that as a species, the better chance we have of succeeding together.”

For its next moon mission—targeting launch before the end of this decade—India may partner with Japan, another Artemis Accords participant. The pair’s planned LUPEX rover would directly study the nature, abundance and accessibility of water ice on the moon’s south pole and could provide vital data for future crewed missions launched there as part of NASA’s Artemis program. “LUPEX requires a more precise touchdown with a much bigger lander. Chandrayaan-3’s success will act as a stepping stone toward India building LUPEX’s lander and thus playing a key role in the future exploration of our moon,” says S. Megala, deputy director of ISRO’s lunar science and exploration program.

First, however, India’s government must formally approve the nation’s involvement. (Japan has already given the green light for its own contribution.) And in the meantime, Japan will launch another lunar mission of its own: the nation’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is slated for liftoff on August 26, with a goal of lunar touchdown later this year to demonstrate new technologies for precise and affordable moon landings amid complex terrain.

Chandrayaan-3: A complete guide to India's third mission to the moon

A rover and lander will together explore the moon's surface.

Chandrayaan-3 mission goals

Chandrayaan-3 science payloads, past chandrayaan missions, lessons learned from failed chandrayaan-2, additional resources.

Chandrayaan-3 is India's next moon mission.

The spacecraft launched to the moon on July 14, 2023, at 5:05 a.m. EDT (0905 GMT or 2:35 p.m. local time July 14) from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India atop the medium-lift Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM3) rocket.

Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed near the moon's south pole on Aug. 23, 2023, at 8:33 a.m. ET (1233 GMT or 6:03 p.m. India Standard Time). 

The mission is managed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). ISRO's roots go back to the beginning of space exploration, as a predecessor agency was set up in 1962 and its first rocket launch was in 1963. ISRO itself was established in 1969.

In June 2023, shortly before the scheduled Chandrayaan-3 launch, India also signed on to the NASA-led Artemis Accords aiming for peaceful human and robotic exploration of the moon. While the immediate benefits of the accords accrue to human spaceflight, according to the White House , the data from Chandrayaan-3 may be useful for future Artemis human landings too.

Related: Every mission to the moon

Chandrayaan-3 costs roughly $77 million USD, according to the Times of India .

The three main objectives of Chandrayaan-3 are to land safely on the surface, to demonstrate rover operations and to perform scientific experiments on site, according to the official website . 

The mission called for a propulsion module to ferry the Chandrayaan-3' Vikram ("valor") lander and the solar-powered rover named Pragyan (Sanskrit for "wisdom") rover together to the south pole of the moon, according to NASA . 

The module then entered lunar orbit and maneuvered into a roughly circular path about 60 miles (100 km) above the surface. Then the lander separated from the module and aimed for a soft landing on the surface, achieving this on Aug. 23, 2023.

The lander and rover will collect science on the surface for 14 Earth days (a single day on the moon), while the propulsion module will gaze at our planet for its own science experiment.

The spacecraft package (rover, lander and propulsion module) includes "advanced technologies" to meet the mission objectives, ISRO says. Examples include hazard detection and avoidance on the rover, a landing leg mechanism to aim for a soft touchdown, and altimeters and velocity instruments to estimate altitude and speed above the moon.

ISRO has performed several technology tests to simulate lunar conditions, the agency emphasized, focusing on matters such as soaking instruments in cold temperatures similar to the moon or doing a lander leg test on a simulated surface under different landing conditions.

Related: ISRO: The Indian Space Research Organization

Science on the Chandrayaan-3 mission is split between the lander, the rover and the propulsion module payload.

"The lander is ... generally box-shaped, with four landing legs and four landing thrusters," NASA writes of the design . Its approximate 3,900-pound (1,752-kilogram) mass will include 57 pounds (26 kgs) for the rover. 

The lander includes:

• Chandra's Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) to measure thermal conductivity and temperature on the surface;
• Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) to detect moonquakes;
• Langmuir Probe to estimate the density and variation of plasma, or superheated gas, in the moon's environment; 
• A Laser Retroreflector Array (from NASA) to measure distances using laser ranging..

The rover "is a rectangular chassis mounted on a six-wheel rocker-bogie wheel drive assembly," NASA added. The rover sends its communications to Earth through the lander. Rover instruments include:

• Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) to look for elements in the lunar soil and rocks;
• Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) to examine the chemical and elemental composition of the lunar surface.

The propulsion module "is a box-like structure with one large solar panel mounted on one side and a large cylinder on top ... that acts as a mounting structure for the lander," NASA says. The propulsion module is more than 2.2 tons (2 tonnes in mass.)

The module's single experiment is the Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) investigation that will assist with exoplanet searches. The experiment will "gather data on the polarization of light reflected by Earth so that researchers can look for other planets with similar signatures," according to Nature .

Chandrayaan-1 was India's first mission to the moon. It launched Oct. 22, 2008 from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India, aboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket. It achieved lunar orbit on Nov. 8. It released a Moon Impact Probe on Nov. 14 that deliberately crashed into the moon later that day. 

Chandrayaan-1 is best known for finding evidence of water ice on the moon. NASA made the announcement on September 2009, based on data collected by the agency's Moon Mineralogy Mapper. The instrument found evidence of hydroxyl (a form of water, hydrogen and oxygen) in the moon's regolith or dust. 

The Moon Impact Probe also found water's signature before impacting the surface, providing a separate set of data. More confirmations came from the Cassini  spacecraft and the Deep Impact  spacecraft's extended EPOXI mission.

Chandrayaan-2 was India's second mission to the moon. It launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India, aboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket on July 22, 2019. It made it to lunar orbit on Aug. 19, 2019.

On Sept. 6, Chandrayaan-2 released the Vikram moon lander , but mission officials lost contact with it as it was just 1.3 miles (2.1 km) above the surface. Although the lander was lost, the orbiter continues to work well. It carries eight different instruments and continues to send back high-definition imagery of the lunar surface.

Chandrayaan-3 will build upon the "lessons learned" from the unsuccessful landing that took place during Chandrayaan-2, ISRO told the Business Standard .

"With optimized payload configurations, improved lander capabilities, and utilizing existing (spacecraft) resources, the mission is expected to address past challenges," the Business Standard wrote of ISRO's approach to Chandrayaan-3.

For example, Chandrayaan-3 will simplify its mission design to not include an orbiter. The predecessor mission, Chandrayaan-2, will therefore handle all communications to Earth from the propulsion module, the rover and the lander.

The propulsion module ferrying Chandraayan-3 to the moon will also only include a single science instrument, as opposed to Chandrayaan-2's orbiter which carried nine. This will simplify the amount of work the propulsion module performs, allowing engineers to focus on its crucial role in bringing the rover and lander to the moon.

The lander of Chandraayan-3 also includes key upgrades. ISRO stated it will have two "lander hazard detection and avoidance cameras" meant to help the lander avoid obstacles on the surface during the descent. Chandrayaan-2 only carried one such camera, and Chandrayaan-3's cameras aim to be more robust than the predecessor mission.

Read more about Chandraayan-3 on the official ISRO website . NASA has technical details about the mission as well.

Bibliography

The Business Standard. (2023, July 7). "Chandrayaan-3: What is it, and how does it improve on its predecessor?" https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/chandrayaan-3-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-improve-on-its-predecessor-123070700477_1.html

Padma, T.V. (2023, July 7). "India shoots for the moon with Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander." Nature . https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02217-0

The White House. (2023, June 22.) "Republic of India official state visit to the United States." https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/22/fact-sheet-republic-of-india-official-state-visit-to-the-united-states/

Times of India. (2023, July 6). "Chandrayaan-3 launch on July 14; August 23-24 preferred landing dates." http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/101547465.cms

Times of India. (2020, Jan. 2.) "Chandrayaan-3 to cost Rs 615 crore, launch could stretch to 2021." https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/chandrayaan-3-to-cost-rs-615-crore-launch-could-stretch-to-2021/articleshow/73055941.cms

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Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

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‘India Is on the Moon’: Lander’s Success Moves Nation to Next Space Chapter

The Chandrayaan-3 mission makes India the first country to reach the lunar south polar region in one piece and adds to the achievements of the country’s homegrown space program.

By Hari Kumar ,  Alex Travelli ,  Mujib Mashal and Kenneth Chang

Hari Kumar and Alex Travelli reported from Bengaluru, India, near the Chandrayaan-3 mission control.

• Published Aug. 23, 2023 Updated Aug. 24, 2023

Two visitors from India — a lander named Vikram and a rover named Pragyan — landed in the southern polar region of the moon on Wednesday. The two robots, from a mission named Chandrayaan-3, make India the first country to ever reach this part of the lunar surface in one piece — and only the fourth country ever to land on the moon.

“We have achieved soft landing on the moon,” S. Somanath, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, said after a roar ripped through the ISRO compound just past 6 p.m. local time. “India is on the moon.”

The Indian public already takes great pride in the accomplishments of the nation’s space program, which has orbited the moon and Mars and routinely launches satellites above the Earth with far fewer financial resources than other space-faring nations.

But the achievement of Chandrayaan-3 may be even sweeter, as it comes at a particularly important moment in the South Asian giant’s diplomatic push as an ambitious power on the rise.

India Successfully Lands Spacecraft on Moon’s Surface

The control room at the indian space research organization erupted in cheers when the chandrayaan-3 spacecraft landed on the southern polar region of the moon..

The altitude is being brought down from 800 meters. And we are nearing and approaching the lunar surface. He hung up a painting for the exact day. He the. People are applauding. From the Secretary department of space and chairman isro Somnath. I’m confident. That all countries in the world. Including those from the Global South. Are capable of achieving such feats. We can all aspire. Part of the moon and beyond.

Indian officials have been advocating in favor of a multipolar world order in which New Delhi is seen as indispensable to global solutions. In space exploration, as in many other fields, the message of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been clear: The world will be a fairer place if India takes on a leadership role, even as the world’s most populous nation works to meet its people’s basic needs.

That assertiveness on the world stage is a central campaign message for Mr. Modi, who is up for re-election to a third term early next year. He has frequently fused his image with that of India’s rise as an economic, diplomatic and technological power.

Mr. Modi has been physically present at mission control for other recent moments in India’s space history, including during a successful orbit of Mars in 2014 and a failed moon landing in 2019 where he was seen consoling the scientists and hugging the chief of ISRO, who was weeping.

But the Chandrayaan-3 landing coincided with his trip to South Africa for a meeting of the group of nations known as BRICS . Mr. Modi’s face beamed into the control room in Bengaluru during the landing’s final minutes, where he was split-screen with the animation of the lander.

“Chandrayaan-3’s triumph mirrors the aspirations and capabilities of 1.4 billion Indians,” Mr. Modi said when the landing was complete, declaring the event as “the moment for new, developing India.”

In a country with a deep tradition of science, the excitement and anticipation around the landing provided a rare moment of unity in what has otherwise been fraught times of sectarian tension stoked by divisive policies of Mr. Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist party.

Prayers were offered for the mission’s success at Hindu temples, Sikh Gurdwaras and Muslim mosques. Schools held special ceremonies and organized live viewings of the moon landing, with an official YouTube video of the event racking up tens of millions of views. The police band in the city of Mumbai, India’s commercial and entertainment hub, sent a “special musical tribute” to the scientists, performing a popular patriotic song.

“There is full faith,” the song, in Hindi, says. “We will succeed.”

The Indian mission launched in July, taking a slow, fuel-conscious route toward the moon. But Chandrayaan-3 out-endured its Russian counterpart, Luna-25, which launched 12 days ago. Luna-25 was scheduled to land on the moon on Monday in the same general vicinity as the Indian craft but crashed on Saturday following an engine malfunction.

That India managed to outdo Russia, which as the Soviet Union put the first satellite, man and woman in space, speaks to the diverging fortunes of the two nations’ space programs.

Much of India’s foreign policy in recent decades has been shaped by a delicate balancing act between Washington and Moscow, but the country is grappling more with an increasingly aggressive China at its borders. The two countries’ militaries have been stuck in a standoff in the Himalayas for three years now, and the vulnerability to a threat from China is a major driving factor in India’s calculations.

A shared frustration with Beijing has only increased U.S. and Indian cooperation , including in space, where China is establishing itself in direct competition with the United States.

And with the success of Chandrayaan-3, Mr. Modi can reap benefits in leaning into India’s scientific prowess to “more confidently assert Indian national interest on the world stage,” said Bharat Karnad, an emeritus professor of national security studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

The control room in Bengaluru became a joyous scene among the engineers, scientists and technicians of the Indian Space Research Organization.

Speaking after the landing, members of the ISRO leadership who managed Chandrayaan-3 made clear that the failure of their last moon landing attempt, in 2019, was a major driving force behind their work.

“From the day we started rebuilding our spacecraft after Chandaryaan-2 experience, it has been breathe in, breathe out Chandrayaan-3 for our team,” said Kalpana Kalahasti, the mission’s associate project director.

Chandrayaan-3 has been orbiting the moon since early August. On Sunday, an engine burn pushed the lander into an elliptical orbit that passed within 15 miles of the surface. On Wednesday, as the spacecraft approached the low point of the orbit, moving at more than 3,700 miles per hour, a preprogrammed sequence of maneuvers commenced.

The craft’s four engines fired again at the start of what ISRO called the “rough braking” portion of the descent, its speed of fall accelerating. After 11.5 minutes, the lander was just over 4.5 miles above the surface and started rotating from a horizontal to a vertical position while continuing its descent.

The spacecraft stopped to hover about 150 yards above the surface for a few seconds, then resumed its downward journey until it settled gently on the surface, about 370 miles from the south pole. The landing sequence took about 19 minutes.

Chandrayaan-3 is a scientific mission, timed for a two-week period when the sun will shine on the landing site and provide energy for the solar-powered lander and rover. The lander and rover will use a range of instruments to make thermal, seismic and mineralogical measurements.

India and ISRO have many other plans afoot.

Although an Indian astronaut flew to orbit on a Soviet spacecraft in 1984, the country has never sent people to space on its own. India is preparing its first astronaut mission, called Gaganyaan. But the project, which aims to send three Indian astronauts to space on the country’s own spacecraft, has faced delays, and ISRO has not announced a date.

The country is also working on launching a solar observatory called Aditya-L1 in early September, and later, an Earth observation satellite built jointly with NASA. India is also planning a follow-up to its recently concluded Mars orbiter mission.

Mr. Somanath has described the current moment as an inflection point, with the country opening its space efforts to private investors after half a century of state monopoly that made advances but at “a shoestring budget mode of working.”

“These are very cost-effective missions,” Mr. Somanath said after the landing. “No one in the world can do it like we do.”

When pressed by reporters about the cost of Chandrayaan-3, Mr. Somanath deflected with laughter: “I won’t disclose such secrets, we don’t want everyone else to become so cost-effective!”

While ISRO will continue exploring the solar system, the accomplishments of India’s private sector may soon garner as much attention. A younger generation of space engineers, inspired by SpaceX , have started going into business on their own. While ISRO’s budget in the past fiscal year was less than $1.5 billion, the size of India’s private space economy is already at least $6 billion and is expected to triple as soon as 2025.

And the pace of change is quickening. Mr. Modi’s government wants India to harness the private sector’s entrepreneurial energy to put more satellites and investment into space — and faster.

Up on the moon Vikram and Pragyan were set to get to work, with the rover possibly rolling onto the lunar surface in the coming hours or sometime on Thursday according to Mr. Somanath. The landing site, on a plateau south of the Manzinus crater and to the west of the Boguslawsky crater, is at about the same latitude as the edge of Antarctica on Earth.

To date, spacecraft have successfully landed on the moon closer to the equator. The polar regions are intriguing because there is frozen water at the bottom of permanently shadowed craters. If such water can be found in sufficient quantities and extracted, astronauts could use it for future space exploration.

The lunar south pole is the intended destination for astronauts who could visit the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program, and also for upcoming Chinese and Russian missions. In the nearer term, as many as three robotic missions, one from Japan and two from private U.S. companies working with NASA, could head to the moon later this year.

But in Bengaluru after the launch, Mr. Somanath hinted that India had its eyes on worlds beyond the moon.

“It is very difficult for any nation to achieve. But we have done so with just two attempts,” he said. “It gives confidence to land on Mars and maybe Venus and other planets, maybe asteroids.”

Hari Kumar is a reporter in the New Delhi bureau. He joined The Times in 1997. More about Hari Kumar

Alex Travelli is a correspondent for The Times based in New Delhi, covering business and economic matters in India and the rest of South Asia. He previously worked as an editor and correspondent for The Economist. More about Alex Travelli

Mujib Mashal is The Times’s bureau chief for South Asia. Born in Kabul, he wrote for magazines including The Atlantic, Harper’s and Time before joining The Times. More about Mujib Mashal

Kenneth Chang has been at The Times since 2000, writing about physics, geology, chemistry, and the planets. Before becoming a science writer, he was a graduate student whose research involved the control of chaos. More about Kenneth Chang

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Chandrayaan-3

Chandrayaan-3 is an Indian Space Research Organization mission that landed near the south pole of the Moon on Aug. 23, 2023. The mission includes a lander and a rover. India plans to demonstrate end-to-end landing and roving capabilities.

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Reactions as India's Chandrayaan-3 makes historic moon landing

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S. SOMANATH, INDIAN SPACE RESEARCH ORGANISATION (ISRO)CHAIRMAN

Narendra modi, prime minister, india, rahul gandhi, member of parliament, congress, shah rukh khan, bollywood actor, d.y. chandrachud, chief justice of india, mallikarjun kharge, president, opposition congress party, bill nelson, administrator, nasa, josef aschbacher, director general, european space agency, uk space agency, pushpa kamal dahal, prime minister, nepal.

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Article Contents

• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. DATA SETS AND MODEL USED IN THIS STUDY
• 3. LANDING SITE CHARACTERIZATION AND HAZARD IDENTIFICATION
• 4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
• 5. CONCLUSION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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Contextual characterization study of Chandrayaan-3 primary landing site

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K Durga Prasad, Megha Bhatt, Amitabh , G Ambily, Sachana Sathyan, Dibyendu Misra, Neeraj Srivastava, Anil Bhardwaj, Contextual characterization study of Chandrayaan-3 primary landing site, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters , Volume 526, Issue 1, November 2023, Pages L116–L123, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slad106

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Chandrayaan-3 is an upcoming lunar mission of India aimed at soft landing and carrying out first-ever in situ investigations at a high-latitude location on the Moon. Chandrayaan-3 consists of a propulsion module, a lander and a rover, that carry a set of payloads for conducting in situ science experiments. In this work, contextual characterization of the primary landing site (PLS) located at 69.367621˚S, 32.348126 ˚E is carried out in terms of identification, geomorphology, composition, and thermophysical context using the best-ever high-resolution data sets. Our geomorphological study indicates that the PLS is safe for landing with slope less than 4˚ in about 78 per cent of landing area and an average elevation variation of about 169 m. The spectral analysis suggests that the region must have experienced extensive space weathering. Compositional analysis indicates that the landing region has a typical highland type of soil characteristics with Mg (4.3–5.2 wt. per cent), Fe (4.2–4.9 wt. per cent), Ca (10–11 wt. per cent), and Ti (0.25–0.35 wt. per cent). Thermophysical analyses show ∼30 and 175 K variability in spatial and diurnal temperatures at the PLS – an indicative of a local terrain of distinctive thermophysical characteristics. With important science instruments onboard, Chandrayaan-3 will provide a unique opportunity towards looking at localized variations leading to an improved understanding of the lunar surface.

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• Saturday, 20 April 2024

Chandrayaan 3

NSSDCA/COSPAR ID:  2023-098A

Description

Chandrayaan 3 is an ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) mission with the primary objective of putting a lander and rover in the highlands near the south pole of the Moon on 23 August 2023 and demonstrating end-to-end landing and roving capabilities. It will also make a number of scientific measurements on the surface and from orbit. It comprises a lander/rover and a propulsion module. The lander/rover will be similar to the Vikram rover on Chandrayaan 2, with improvements to help ensure a safe landing. It will be carried to lunar orbit by the propulsion module which will remain in orbit around the Moon and act as a communications relay satellite.

Spacecraft and Subsystems

The propulsion module is a box-like structure (modified I-3K structure) with one large solar panel mounted on one side and a large cylinder on top (the Intermodule Adapter Cone) that acts as a mounting structure for the lander. The main thruster nozzle is on the bottom. It has a mass of 2145.01 kg, of which 1696.39 kg is propellant for the MMH + MON3 bi-propellant propulsion system. It can generate 738 W power. Communications is via S-Band and attitude sensors include a star sensor, Sun sensor, and Inertial Reference unit and Accelerometer Package (IRAP).

The Vikram (named after Indian space program pioneer Vikram Sarabhai) lander is also generally box-shaped (200 x 200 x 116.6 cm), with four landing legs and four landing thrusters. It has a mass of 1749.86 kg, including 26 kg for the rover, and can generate 738 W using side-mounted solar panels. The lander has a number of sensors to ensure a safe touchdown, including an accelerometer, altimeters (Ka-band and laser), Doppler velocimeter, star sensors, inclinometer, touchdown sensor, and a suite of cameras for hazard avoidance and positional knowledge. Reaction wheels are used for attitude control, and propulsion is provided by a MMH and MON3 bipropellant system with four 800 N throttleable engines and eight 58 N throttleable engines. An X-band antenna is used for communications. The lander carries the rover in a compartment with a ramp for deployment onto the surface.

The Pragyan (Sanskrit for "wisdom") rover has a rectangular chassis, 91.7 x 75.0 x 39.7 cm in size, mounted on a six-wheel rocker-bogie wheel drive assembly. It has navigation cameras and a solar panel that can generate 50 W. It communicates directly with the lander via Rx/Tx antennas.

The Vikram lander carried an instrument called Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) to measure surface thermal properties, the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) to measure seismicity around the landing site, the Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive ionosphere and Atmosphere (RAMBHA) to study the gas and plasma environment, and a passive laser retroreflector array provided by NASA for lunar ranging studies. The Pragyan rover carried two instruments to study the local surface elemental composition, an Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS). The Propulsion Module / Orbiter had one experiment called the Spectropolarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) to study Earth from lunar orbit.

Mission Profile

Chandrayaan 3 launched on 14 July 2023 at 9:05:17 UT (2:35 p.m. India standard time), on a GSLV Mark 3 (LVM 3) heavy lift launch vehicle from Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India, into an approximately 170 x 36,500 km elliptic Earth parking orbit. This was followed by a number of maneuvers over about 40 days to bring it to the Moon. On 5 August, the spacecraft was placed into a 164 x 18,074 km lunar orbit by a 30-minute engine firing. A number of firings by the propulsion module put the lander/rover into a 153 x 163 km altitude polar lunar orbit by August 17. The Vikram lander then separated. It began its powered descent towards the surface at 12:14 UT on 23 August and landed in the south polar region of the Moon, at 69.3741 S, 32.32 E, 19 minutes later at 12:33 UT (6:03 p.m. India Standard Time). The Vikram rover was deployed on August 24 and the lander and rover conducted experiments on the surface. The lander and rover were designed to operate for one lunar daylight period (about 14 Earth days). On September 4 they entered sleep mode. Efforts to communicate with them starting the next lunar sunlight period on September 22 were unsuccessful, as was expected.

The propulsion module / communications acted as a relay satellite in lunar orbit to enable communications with Earth. (Chandrayaan 2 could also have been used as a backup relay.) A number of later orbit raising maneuvers brought the propulsion module out of lunar orbit and into a high Earth orbit by November 10, possibly in order to test possible future sample return strategies.

Image credit: ISRO

Alternate Names

• Chandrayaan3

Facts in Brief

Launch Date:  2023-07-14 Launch Vehicle:  LVM 3 Launch Site:  Sriharikota, India Mass:  3895 kg Nominal Power:  738 W

Funding Agency

• Indian Space Research Organization (India)
• Planetary Science

Additional Information

• Launch/Orbital information for Chandrayaan 3
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• Experiments on Chandrayaan 3
• Data collections from Chandrayaan 3

Questions and comments about this spacecraft can be directed to: Dr. David R. Williams   Personnel

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New Delhi: The alternative landing site for India’s third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, could become a potential spot for future lunar landings and experiments, an analysis by Ahmedabad’s Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) has found.

In their study published in the journal Current Science last week, the researchers provide a detailed analysis of the geomorphology, composition, and temperatures of the alternative site chosen for India’s third Moon mission last year. They highlighted that the site would be “interesting” for carrying out in-situ scientific experiments for future lunar landing missions.

“Two landing sites were chosen for parking the Chandrayaan-3 lander,” Anil Bhardwaj, director of PRL, told ThePrint. PRL, a research institute funded by the Union government’s Department of Space, has been supporting the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in its space and planetary exploration missions.

The plan was that if the Vikram lander was unable to make a landing at the primary site, ISRO would attempt to land again after two days at the alternative site.

“For any space mission, we have a backup plan. We have conducted a thorough analysis of both the primary and the alternate sites, to give a complete picture to ISRO and help them execute the mission,” Bharadwaj said.

Such in-depth analysis of the site can make it a contender for future lunar landing missions being planned by India.

“The prime minister has set a target that by 2040 an Indian would land on the Moon. Who knows, this could be the site where they land. Not just India, even other countries can use information from our analysis to plan their future lunar missions,” he added. 

On 23 August last year, ISRO created history by becoming the first space agency in the world to land near the lunar south pole. With the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3, India joined the elite list of three other nations who have managed to land on the Moon. Before India, only the former USSR, the US, and China had achieved this feat.

The Indian space agency landed its craft about 600 km away from the south pole of the Moon, between the Manzius U and Boguslawsky M craters. The site has now been named Shiv-Shakti Point.

For 14 days after the landing, the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover conducted significant experiments, which will form the basis of India’s future lunar missions, ISRO scientists said.

The latest PRL study highlights that local geomorphological variations of the alternative landing site for Chandrayaan-3 were characterised by smooth topography with a relatively elevated central part and an average elevation of about 216 m. The alternative site, which lies to the west of the Moretus crater, can be divided into two distinct geomorphic units, primarily based on fresh crater distribution and associated boulder density, the analysis suggests.

According to the study, the alternative landing site, despite being a small area, records significant temperature variability. Curiously, a variation of about 40 Kelvin in the surface temperatures of the region was observed by researchers. It was also found that Tycho, known to be one of the youngest craters on the Moon, was located to the north of this site. This means that it receives prominent visible ejecta rays from the Tycho crater. This provides a unique opportunity for future landing missions to sample the crater composition, which is likely to be very different from the Apollo rocks that were collected from the lunar equator.

“Significant variability in local scale surface and subsurface temperatures is evident from model simulations… Inferences from this study indicate ALS (alternate landing site) as a potential in-situ sampling site due to its distinct geomorphological and thermophysical characteristics and the possible existence of migrated material from the distant Tycho crater,” the findings read.

In simpler terms, the terrain has distinct features from the primary site, which makes it a fit location for carrying out fresh experiments in the future.

Bhardwaj said that while the alternative site was on the same latitude, about two-three degrees away from the original landing site, this translated to a distance of hundreds of kilometres in reality. “That gives it completely new possibilities and scope for novel findings in the future ,” he added.

(Edited by Mannat Chugh)

Also Read: Launch of NISAR, joint India-US Earth mapping mission, delayed. New date to be announced by April-end

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International Astronomical Union approves Chandrayaan-3 landing site name ‘Shiva Shakti’

T he International Astronomical Union (IAU) has approved the Chandrayaan-3 landing site name 'Shiva Shakti'. The approval came on March 19 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement following the success of the mission on August 26, 2023.

"IAU working group for Planetary System Nomenclature has approved the name station 'Shiv Shakti' for the landing site of Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander," the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, which provides detailed information about planetary names by IAU said.

The announcement defined the origin of the name as, a "compound word from Indian mythology that depicts masculine (Shiva) and feminine (Shakti) duality of nature; Landing site of Chandrayaan-3's Vikram Lander.

On August 28, 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced at ISRO announced that the landing point of the Chandrayaan-3 Mission would be known as “Shiv Shakti Point”.

While the Chandrayaan-2 landing failure spot will be called “Tiranga point", the day of the touchdown of the Vikram Lander on the Moon (August 23) will be celebrated as “National Space Day” in the country, PM Modi had stated.

Prime Minister Modi made the announcements while addressing the gathering of scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) at the ISRO Command Centre.

Also, read: Tata Power deploys EV charging points on key routes to Ayodhya

“India has decided to name the touchdown point where Vikram Lander made a soft landing on the Moon as “Shiv Shakti Point”. The word “Shiv” stands for the welfare of humanity. “Shakti” stands for the required strength to get going to achieve the welfare of humanity,” PM Modi said.

PM Modi has said that the Moon’s Shiv Shakti point will be a symbol of unity from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari. “The Shiv Shakti Point will inspire future generations in the direction of the use of science for the welfare of humanity,” PM Modi had underlined.

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ISRO chief Somanath's big claim on Chandrayaan lunar mission : ‘Till an Indian…’

Last august, isro’s chandrayaan-3 spacecraft made a soft landing on the south pole of the lunar surface, making india the first country to achieve the feat..

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman S Somanath has informed that India will continue sending lunar missions until ‘an Indian lands on the Moon’. The scientist noted that the agency will continue their series of Chandrayaan missions and probes until an astronaut from the country lands on the Moon. 

Somnath was in Ahmedabad as the chief guest of a programme organised by the Astronautical Society of India.

In August 2023, ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft had made a soft landing on the south pole of the Moon's surface, making India the first country to achieve the feat.

“Chandrayaan 3 has done very well. Data has been collected and scientific publication has just started. Now, we want to continue the Chandrayaan series till an Indian lands on the Moon . Before that, we have to master many technologies, such as going there and coming back. That we are trying to do in the next mission," Somanath said.

S Somanath on Gaganyaan

Somanath said ISRO will carry out an uncrewed Gaganyaan mission, a test vehicle flight mission and an airdrop test in 2024.

“The airdrop test will happen on April 24. Then two more uncrewed missions will happen next year and then the manned mission, if everything goes well, by the end of next year," the ISRO chairman said.

The Gaganyaan project envisages the demonstration of human spaceflight capability by launching a crew of 3 members to an orbit of 400 km for a 3-day mission and bringing them back safely to Earth, by landing in Indian sea waters.

S Somanath on ISRO's Carbon-Carbon (C-C) nozzle

Somanath said ISRO's newly developed Carbon-Carbon (C-C) nozzle will improve payload capacity for being lightweight and it will be installed in the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle or PSLV.

In a release on April 16, ISRO announced that it had achieved a breakthrough in rocket engine technology with the development of a lightweight C-C nozzle for rocket engines, enhancing payload capacity.

This innovation accomplished by the space agency's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre promises to enhance the vital parameters of rocket engines, including thrust levels, specific impulse, and thrust-to-weight ratios, thereby boosting the payload capacity of launch vehicles, it said.

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Chandrayaan missions to continue until an Indian lands on moon: ISRO Chairman

Last august, the premier space agency’s chandrayaan-3 spacecraft made a soft landing on the south pole of the lunar surface, making india the first country to achieve the feat. chandrayaan 3 has done very well..

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AI improves accuracy of skin cancer diagnoses in Stanford Medicine-led study

Artificial intelligence algorithms powered by deep learning improve skin cancer diagnostic accuracy for doctors, nurse practitioners and medical students in a study led by the Stanford Center for Digital Health.

April 11, 2024 - By Krista Conger

Artificial intelligence helped clinicians diagnose skin cancer more accurately, a Stanford Medicine-led study found. Chanelle Malambo/peopleimages.com   -  stock.adobe.com

A new study led by researchers at Stanford Medicine finds that computer algorithms powered by artificial intelligence based on deep learning can help health care practitioners to diagnose skin cancers more accurately. Even dermatologists benefit from AI guidance, although their improvement is less than that seen for non-dermatologists.

“This is a clear demonstration of how AI can be used in collaboration with a physician to improve patient care,” said professor of dermatology and of epidemiology Eleni Linos , MD. Linos leads the Stanford Center for Digital Health , which was launched to tackle some of the most pressing research questions at the intersection of technology and health by promoting collaboration between engineering, computer science, medicine and the humanities.

Linos, associate dean of research and the Ben Davenport and Lucy Zhang Professor in Medicine, is the senior author of the study , which was published on April 9 in npj Digital Medicine . Postdoctoral scholar Jiyeong Kim , PhD, and visiting researcher Isabelle Krakowski, MD, are the lead authors of the research.

“Previous studies have focused on how AI performs when compared with physicians,” Kim said. “Our study compared physicians working without AI assistance with physicians using AI when diagnosing skin cancers.”

AI algorithms are increasingly used in clinical settings, including dermatology. They are created by feeding a computer hundreds of thousands or even millions of images of skin conditions labeled with information such as diagnosis and patient outcome. Through a process called deep learning, the computer eventually learns to recognize telltale patterns in the images that correlate with specific skin diseases including cancers. Once trained, an algorithm written by the computer can be used to suggest possible diagnoses based on an image of a patient’s skin that it has not been exposed to.

Eleni Linos

These diagnostic algorithms aren’t used alone, however. They are overseen by clinicians who also assess the patient, come to their own conclusions about a patient’s diagnosis and choose whether to accept the algorithm’s suggestion.

An accuracy boost

Kim and Linos’ team reviewed 12 studies detailing more than 67,000 evaluations of potential skin cancers by a variety of practitioners with and without AI assistance. They found that, overall, health care practitioners working without aid from artificial intelligence were able to accurately diagnose about 75% of people with skin cancer — a statistical measurement known as sensitivity. Conversely, the workers correctly diagnosed about 81.5% of people with cancer-like skin conditions but who did not have cancer — a companion measurement known as specificity.

Health care practitiones who used AI to guide their diagnoses did better. Their diagnoses were about 81.1% sensitive and 86.1% specific. The improvement may seem small, but the differences are critical for people told they don’t have cancer, but do, or for those who do have cancer but are told they are healthy.

When the researchers split the health care practitioners by specialty or level of training, they saw that medical students, nurse practitioners and primary care doctors benefited the most from AI guidance — improving on average about 13 points in sensitivity and 11 points in specificity. Dermatologists and dermatology residents performed better overall, but the sensitivity and specificity of their diagnoses also improved with AI.

“I was surprised to see everyone’s accuracy improve with AI assistance, regardless of their level of training,” Linos said. “This makes me very optimistic about the use of AI in clinical care. Soon our patients will not just be accepting, but expecting, that we use AI assistance to provide them with the best possible care.”

Jiyeong Kim

Researchers at the Stanford Center for Digital Health, including Kim, are interested in learning more about the promise of and barriers to integrating AI-based tools into health care. In particular, they are planning to investigate how the perceptions and attitudes of physicians and patients to AI will influence its implementation.

“We want to better understand how humans interact with and use AI to make clinical decisions,” Kim said. 

Previous studies have indicated that a clinician’s degree of confidence in their own clinical decision, the degree of confidence of the AI, and whether the clinician and the AI agree on the diagnosis all influence whether the clinician incorporates the algorithm’s advice when making clinical decisions for a patient.

Medical specialties like dermatology and radiology, which rely heavily on images — visual inspection, pictures, X-rays, MRIs and CT scans, among others — for diagnoses are low-hanging fruit for computers that can pick out levels of detail beyond what a human eye (or brain) can reasonably process. But even other more symptom-based specialties, or prediction modeling, are likely to benefit from AI intervention, Linos and Kim feel. And it’s not just patients who stand to benefit.

“If this technology can simultaneously improve a doctor’s diagnostic accuracy and save them time, it’s really a win-win. In addition to helping patients, it could help reduce physician burnout and improve the human interpersonal relationships between doctors and their patients,” Linos said. “I have no doubt that AI assistance will eventually be used in all medical specialties. The key question is how we make sure it is used in a way that helps all patients regardless of their background and simultaneously supports physician well-being.”

Researchers from the Karolinska Institute, the Karolinska University Hospital and the University of Nicosia contributed to the research.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants K24AR075060 and R01AR082109), Radiumhemmet Research, the Swedish Cancer Society and the Swedish Research Council.

For more news about responsible AI in health and medicine,  sign up  for the RAISE Health newsletter.

Register  for the RAISE Health Symposium on May 14.

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu .

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• NATURE CAREERS PODCAST
• 13 December 2023

The Chandrayaan lunar landing and how it could impact India’s brain drain

• Jack Leeming 0 &
• Julie Gould 1

Jack Leeming is a careers editor at Nature in London.

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Julie Gould is a freelance science writer in London.

Somak Raychaudhury discusses India's brain drain and achievements in space science.

In August, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft touched down, making India only the fourth country to have successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon. In this Working Scientist podcast, Somak Raychaudhury, astrophysicist and vice-chancellor at Ashoka University, India, tells Jack Leeming about India’s history of space research, the significance of the lunar landing, and how it might help to stem a “brain drain” of Indian researchers moving abroad permanently to develop their careers.

The episode is part of the Nature Spotlight on India, an editorially-independent supplement.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03897-4

Julie Gould: 00:28

On the 23rd of August 2023, India became the fourth country to successfully land a spacecraft on the southern side of the Moon: Chandrayaan-3, which translates to moon vehicle three. But why do we need to study the Moon? Well, other than the obvious, it’s super interesting. It’s also because it’s the Earth’s sister. It was formed at the same time from the same nebula. And it’s made of the same things. For example, we can find certain things on the surface of the moon that you can only find deeper down in the Earth. So studying the moon often tells us a lot about the Earth itself. So to reflect on this Indian lunar mission, the Nature Careers editor Jack Leeming spoke with astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury, the current Vice Chancellor of Ashoka University in India. Raychaudhury started his career in astrophysics in the UK studying at the University of Oxford before completing a PhD at Cambridge University. He took on his first teaching post, which he held for more than a decade, at Birmingham University before returning to India. Because his career has spanned different continents Raychaudhury has had the opportunity to be involved in several international space missions, for example, working with NASA on the Chandra satellite project space telescope, and with India Sun mission to develop that ultraviolet camera.

Somak Raychaudhury: 01:46

In this conversation, Jack and Somak Raychaudhury talk about Chandrayaan-3 and what data it has collected, but also why it is important for India to have done this. They also discuss the history of India’s space programme and how India is developing its space industry, which leads them on to the launch of its solar satellite, Aditya. The second half of the conversation is about brain drain in India, and how they’re dealing with this.

Somak Raychaudhury: 02:12

This interview is part of the Nature spotlight on India, a supplement to Nature covering the country’s scientific and economic development. For more, you can go to nature.com. Somak starts the conversation by telling us about the Chandrayaan-3’s history and purpose,

Somak Raychaudhury: 02:28

Right. So this is the third mission to the moon. The first one was in 2008, Chanrayaan-1 which went on an orbit around the moon did not attempt to land but it had a couple of experiments to look for water on the moon. And it found signatures of water from going around the moon. So that gave us indication that one could a) get vehicle in orbit around the moon -- and of course not many other countries have done that -- and b) the ISRO which is India’s space organisation had the capability of launching a vehicle that did this very complex manoeuvre of going around the earth and to the moon in a very long orbit, which actually brought down costs the low cost mission. So it was most mostly an exploratory mission.

Jack Leeming: 03:15

And then three years ago, Chandrayaan-2 attempted to land a lander vehicle on the moon, and that lander crashed in the last minute or so of its landing procedure, it was going alright, but it didn’t manage to land properly. The orbiter part of Chandrayaan-2 is still in orbit around the moon and is done very good work; it’s still doing very good work. So Chandrayaan-3 was then sent as a follow up where the number of experiments on the orbiter itself was kept at a minimum because Jamie on to is already operational. But it was mostly sent as a vehicle to be landed on the moon. And in the last few years, there’s been a lot of discussion and analysis on what happened to Chandrayaan-2 so that it did not land and then the analysis brought up quite a lot of very interesting points, all to do with how the hardware could be improved, how the software could be improved, how the landing procedure could be improved, things like that.

Jack Leeming: 04:21

It’s important because this is one of the first missions to land a near the South Pole of the moon, the southern hemisphere of the moon; it’s kind of the far side of the Moon is largely unexplored. And so this was as far south on the moon as anybody’s gone. And so this one Chandrayaan-3 landed finally successfully, at a place which was not far from where Chandrayaan-2 had been unsuccessful, and did its work for 14 days, which is the length of the lunar day. Since then it has gone into hibernation. We didn’t expect to get it back. But the 14 day mission has sent back a wealth of information. And all the instruments that worked that were on the lander worked very well. So we would call it a very successful mission, not just landing; it did another interesting thing which is that it it did a little hop -- it took off and landed back in again in preparation for future missions, which will actually collect stuff from the surface of the moon and take off from the surface of the moon.

Jack Leeming: 05:22

And so you’ve learned that it can hop, so the future Chandrayaan-4, maybe we’ll be able to hop off and on.

Somak Raychaudhury: 05:31

Yeah, but the scientific instruments that were on this lander has so far worked very well, of course, the data has been analysed, but it managed, everything managed to work very well. So I think the difference between the three and the two was amazing, the fact that it had quite a lot of things built into it, to make it accident proof, so that it demonstrated that it actually could land and roam around. So there’s a rover that roam around on the surface of the moon,

Jack Leeming: 05:57

Can you give us some examples of a kind of the kind of data that the spacecraft collected?

Somak Raychaudhury: 06:03

For example, the Chandrayaan-2, one of the instruments had shown very convincingly the presence of water in the southern hemisphere of the moon, but it only talked about water being there, we didn’t know where it was, there is was always a suspicion that it would be in the shadowed parts of these places, the temperature goes down to as low as minus 200 degrees. And so that’s where water is supposed to be. So the part of the rover’s experiments were to travel around in an area, try to figure out whether they could actually find water. So that’s one of the missions, we don’t know what’s been found yet the data is being analysed.

Somak Raychaudhury: 06:45

But in addition to that, part of the experiments were to figure out what the composition is of the thin layer of atmosphere that the moon has. The moon has a very thin layer of air, and it’s also full of charged particles. So, there was one experiment that looked at what kind of charged particles there are in the in the atmosphere, another looked for various gases that could be in the atmosphere. Then this part of experiments also looked at the composition of the moon soil in the southern hemisphere, and looked at the presence of certain minerals in the soil. It also very critically looked at -- and this we’ve seen the data to be very good -- looked at mild vibrations on the surface of the moon.

Somak Raychaudhury: 07:29

These are the moonquakes, like the earthquakes, mild moonquakes. So there are a lot of theories about what causes moonquakes. It could be the constant bombardment of the moon surface because the moon doesn’t have a protective atmosphere, bombardment of material from outside, that also causes the moon to vibrate quite a bit. But like the Earth, it could be from within -- we don’t know what’s inside the moon. So it could be volcanic activity, lava activity from within the moon, that would cause mild tremors. All of these are important with the view to one day, having a building having colonies on the moon, right? If you want us to have establishments on the moon, not just to live there, but maybe as a stop on the way to other places in the solar system, then we would like to know what’s near the surface. So these are all experiments designed to start this kind of exploration.

Jack Leeming: 08:28

I guess that’s why it’s significant from the perspective of space researchers. That’s why that mission’s important: to learn that sort of stuff. Why is it important for India? India is only the fourth country to do something like this.

Somak Raychaudhury: 08:38

For India, it had more of a way of trying to test the technology that the Indian Space Programme is capable of. The Indian Space Programme has been on since the early 60s. And so in 50 years, what has it achieved? It has independent launchers that is capable of launching complex satellites and payloads up to four or five tonnes in weight, which is significant, it also can produce low cost missions to go to the moon and now we know to Mars and on the way you have very complex manoeuvres that can go around these particular celestial bodies and also to land on the moon.

Somak Raychaudhury: 09:19

So, it is important for India to demonstrate a lot of this in addition to the science, because the space industry is growing very fast. The international space industry is now worth more than $600 billion and India currently plays a very small part of it and you would like to play a very important role and achievements like this go a long way in doing that to both to show Indians I mean ourselves that we are capable of doing it, but also to show the world that there is a lot of space ready industry that there which can take part in international projects.

Jack Leeming: 09:56

Understand that recently India started to open up its space research sector to private investment. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Somak Raychaudhury: 10:05

What India has done with the global space industry in mind, India joined the Artemis accord recently, right. So Artemis is a global Moon project, which involves a lot of the industrialised countries around the world, who are thinking in the long term about missions on the moon and also activities on the moon. So that’s one part of it. And this is one of the largest coordinated space projects that people have thought about. India also has ambitions of manned flights having its own space station and sending astronauts into space and maybe landing on various parts of the solar system. That’s one part. And then because the Indian space establishment is maybe one of the top five in the world. And this almost a trillion dollar industry worldwide, which is rapidly expanding has very little from India in it. So India recognised that because the Indian space activities have been traditionally done by the government-owned Indian Space Research Organisation department of space, the government of India is not capable of handling such a huge job globally. And of course, since the global space industry is moving towards being led by private entities, governments can’t necessarily always interact with private entities. So it’s very clear that if India wants to play an important role in the global industry, the activities we’ll have to open up to the private sector. And I think it’s only time before we can see major space players coming up amongst the industry in India.

Jack Leeming: 11:40

Now, you mentioned that Indian Space Research and these public organisation started in around the 1960s. What does that space heritage come from? How did it sort of start?

Somak Raychaudhury: 11:50

In the 60s, the missions were technology driven. And even though the Indian Space Programme had started, then it wasn’t really enough to do the exploration of the solar system. The Indian Space Technology started towards doing remote sensing the photography from space of weather systems, agricultural land, and this was more driven by India’s needs for the space programme to serve the key priorities of India, one of the main priorities being agriculture. So Indian agriculture has been amazingly helped by the space mission in India by looking at the terrain of the land, by changing communication between various parts of India, looking at big programmes on natural disasters, and predicting them, how to manage them and things like that.

Somak Raychaudhury: 12:39

And so, this was the focus of India and it wasn’t really going to the moon. What has now happened is that as a result of the very robust work of weather satellites of remote sensing satellites and then communication satellites, from the 60s onwards, India has now gained its own launcher programme and science programme. And scientists got interested in India’s Space Programme starting from the 90s onwards, and India’s first scientific satellite was launched only in 2015 astrosat, which has five telescopes on it. And India’s interest in science from space, which Chandrayaan and Aditya are all part of comes from a very long tradition of Indian scientists and astrophysicists who’ve been working on ground based work on astronomy trying to understand the universe. Now having a ways of sending telescopes up into space above the atmosphere.

Somak Raychaudhury: 13:34

You know, there are many branches of astronomy that cannot be done from the earth. And these are things like ultraviolet astronomy, infared astronomy, gamma ray astronomy, things like that. And big systems like NASA and JAXA, from Japan, they have been sending up some of these amazing space based observatories for a long time. And ESA, for example, in the European Space Agency. Now India’s starts getting into this only in the last few years and the Chandrayaan mission are part of that just extends India’s interest in producing these amazing space vehicles that can go and explore the solar system. But with now, scientists taking an active interest in it and giving it purpose.

Jack Leeming: 14:15

Yes. Well, my next question, actually, so we’re speaking, a month to the day that Aditya launched, I think. That’s a solar observatory. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Somak Raychaudhury: 14:26

Yes and I’m pretty excited about it. I was there at the launch of Aditya-1.

Jack Leeming: 14:31

Oh! Tell us a bit about the launch actually, if you wouldn’t mind. Where was it?

Somak Raychaudhury: 14:34

I was launched from the same launching pad in the eastern coast of India from Sriharikota. And it’s a very complex launch because Aditya-1 goes not around the Earth, but eventually when it reaches there in four months’ time, it will orbit the first Lagrangian point which is about 1% of the way to the sun. So in the in the Earth-Sun system there are five parking spaces. Called the Lagrangian points where if you put a satellite, it stays there because the gravitational force of the Earth and the Sun on it balance out. And so the first Lagrangian point is somewhere where this mission is going.

Somak Raychaudhury: 15:11

And that’s where you can stay for a long time. And you can monitor the Sun 24 hours without going into the Earth’s shadow. So once it gets there, and using two instruments, one is images, the disk of the Sun at the highest resolution, so far done in the ultraviolet. So in the ultraviolet Sun is very active, it doesn’t look very like a boring yellow disk, it actually in the ultraviolet, you can see constant solar activity happening on the surface of the sun, because sun is very highly magnetic on the sun, and so that a magnetic storm is going on all the time. And you can image them, the storms then generate a lot of charged particles that are rejected into its corona. The corona is many times larger than the Sun itself.

Somak Raychaudhury: 15:51

And the interesting thing is that the Sun’s surface is about 6000 degrees, but its corona is more than a million degrees hot. And we don’t understand why the surrounding the sun, which stretches to about five, six times the size of the Sun, is a million degree hot plasma, and it’s full of charged particles that come out of these solar storms. Now, a lot of these then travel to the earth. And these are called coronal mass ejections that travel all the way to the Earth, of course, it goes everywhere in space, but the ones that come to the earth are responsible for causing the aurouri in the poles. So it’s beautiful. But on the other hand, as these charged particles come and bombard the Earth’s atmosphere, it hits a lot of our communication satellites, anything that’s in the upper atmosphere, and causes damage. So as the number of things that we are dependent on, which are in orbit around the Earth increases, it is very important for us to know how the Sun’s activities affect the Earth’s atmosphere.

Jack Leeming: 17:02

And that’s what Atitya is going to be doing. Pun not intended, what was the atmosphere like when the probe left the Earth?

Somak Raychaudhury: 17:09

Yeah, that was wonderful. This is my second launch from the same place. I was there at the Astrosat launch eight years ago. But this was wonderful. It’s a great experience, you actually, you take part in the countdown, indoors, you’re sitting in the control room, looking at the countdown, and then a minute before the launch itself, you rush out to the terrace to see the thing coming up. And it’s very loud. And seeing a launch and being there is a wonderful experience. And of course, then you have your fingers crossed for an hour or so. And hope that it will actually go through all the different stages that he has to go through by shedding different parts of the rockets. And finally, the satellite going into free space.

Jack Leeming: 17:50

Now, slight change of tone -- but I’m really interested in your opinions on this. One of the things that has really come out of our reporting on India so far for this special on India, is the sense of brain drain. The sense of brain drain, whilst India awards, lots of lots of PhDs to people, a lot of those people then leave and go elsewhere and take that training and education with them. Now it strikes me -- and I know we’ve spoken about this before -- big international reputation and international programmes like India space mission might be a really powerful way to retain that talent or to draw talent back into India. What do you think about that, in your position as a Vice Chancellor of a university?

Somak Raychaudhury: 18:27

it’s a very important part of it. I mean, in my generation, when we went into university, we knew that if one had to do research at all, even work at the forefront of these technologies, I wanted to go abroad, and I went to the UK to study and then went and worked in the US and worked for agencies like NASA and ESA and things like that. And if you look at the forefront of scientific research in most subjects. And certainly in space and astronomy, you would find a large number of Indians working all across the globe.

Somak Raychaudhury: 19:00

That’s because India’s science training, the universities are very, very robust, very good. And so how you train people without any opportunities going around the world. I think that’s what the brain drain is. Now one of the things that struck me most in the Chanryaan-3 launch and then the Aditya-1 launch is that this is the first time you stood done a public exercise in inviting the media into these events.

Somak Raychaudhury: 19:24

Until now many of the activities of ISRO had really not been media friendly. And when I went out there, and in my university students were watching it live on big screens. It was actually on YouTube Live, the most popular ever live programme on YouTube. If you look at the number of people who watched it so far, in the history of YouTube. And you could see that in the streets, you could hear kids celebrating on the streets as if India’s just won a cricket match. You’re hearing that kind of cheers from from the streets of India that itself shows not just that the common people are involved in it, the next generation of students, people who will going to do all this or getting involved in what they see are achievements of Indian science and technology.

Somak Raychaudhury: 20:13

This itself is very, very important and the fact that one actually starts to feel that you can achieve such things in India. I think it’s going to be very important. I mean, the brain drain works in both ways people go to train abroad, but they never come back. And there are a whole generations of students who don’t think that it’s worth studying for higher very technical subjects in India. I think what will happen in the future is that a lot of people will study at Indian universities who want to do this kind of thing will remain in India and not go abroad. And people who have gone abroad for such training will come back.

Jack Leeming: 20:53

Have you noticed that already at Ashoka University?

Somak Raychaudhury: 20:55

Well, one of the reasons we are here at Ashoka university is that we’re trying to build an international university here in India in the private sector; again Indian education has largely been government supported. And in the private sector. Now, Ashoka can actually have an international presence. At Ashoka here I have students from 20 different countries. 20% of my faculty are non-Indian. And this is increasing. And almost all the faculty that I have about 200 faculty on campus, have had their last jobs abroad. So a lot of people who are here who have gone abroad and then come back, and we’re attracting people who are non Indians who want to work in India. And this I think, hopefully, that’s a trend in in academia.

Jack Leeming: 21:44

And that sense of internationalism, that sense of joining the larger international community that comes to these big scientific projects. That’s not just limited to space, I think it’s where India really shines. But I’m sure there’s lots of other projects outside of space science, where it’s happening.

Somak Raychaudhury: 22:00

This is also quite new in Indian science. I mean, I think, again, when when I went to university, Indian science was not part of international science, the big science project. But now, in almost all subjects. I know India’s actually formally at the government level part of large projects. India is part of the fusion energy project ether, which is based in France, in astronomy, there’s part of the Square Kilometre Array and the 30 metre telescope and Gravitational Wave Observatory, LIGO. These are all big projects that involve many, many countries all over the world. And India being part of it, Indian scientists are becoming part of the projects, they’re going around the world, and interacting directly with the international community, but being members of Indian institutions. And this, of course, is a trend in the space industry. And space research is just a part of the whole thing. And so you have to see that in context of India’s growing globalisation of all kinds of academics.

Jack Leeming: 23:03

That’s a real rosy picture of Indian academia and moving into the international community. But are there any sort of pain points? Or is there anywhere that needs to get better?

Somak Raychaudhury: 23:12

I mean, by no means, am I saying that we’ve arrived, I mean, I think there’s still a long way to go. There’s been a tradition of very good university education and research in India, but they’ve been separate. I mean, in India, research happened in research institutions. And teaching happens in universities, very few universities do research. And very few students going to university see research being done. And one of the major things that’s happening in India is to bring the two together. My university, Ashoka, is one of very few universities that has brought together so the people who teach also do research, but in overwhelming fraction of India’s 1000 universities, the faculty don’t do research. So that is one of the important things I mean, even to reverse the brain drain one needs to have students go through a programme of research and teaching at universities. This is the big goal, I think, in kind of re modelling Indian university education that’s happening the national education policy that was unleashed on the country in 2020 talks about this: bringing research and teaching together. This is a big task. India is a large country, the number of colleges and universities is mind boggling. But incidents like successes with the space programme, successes with the the attempts to globalisation, they all help in providing motivation to this much larger system.

Jack Leeming: 24:42

And actually on that, what are your hopes for the future, both for space science and maybe also Indian science in general?

Somak Raychaudhury: 24:48

I have very high hopes for the way things are going. I think one of the major challenges is to as I said, bring research into the universities so that that improves the level of education because people who are creating knowledge in research are also giving that knowledge to the students, then there’s a very ambitious programme going on in bringing women into higher education and science in particular. And this is another big thing. Of course, as I said, the numbers are mind boggling, because half that number are women and the number of women in Indian science is still, particularly away from the major cities is something that needs to be improved. So that’s another big challenge.

Somak Raychaudhury: 25:27

But I think we are just about a generation away from India becoming one of the major leaders in world academics. Already, the number of papers coming out of Indian science is in the top five in the world. Now, the quality of those papers needs to improve. The amount of money that the government spends on Indian higher education is still much much below the average of the countries that are very active in science, that will have to improve. But India is trying very hard to bring actual private money from industry into Indian science and university education, university research. So that will help. So I’m very hopeful that the brain drain problem that we’re talking about will be revised. But also in some key subjects India will become the place where the world’s scientists will come and work.

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Elgin Courier-News | Food that helps feed more than 1,000 at…

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Elgin Courier-News

Elgin courier-news | food that helps feed more than 1,000 at antarctic research bases for a year procured by elgin company.

Talk about a cool job.

Food for two of the three U.S. research bases located in the frozen tundra of Antarctica is procured by Elgin-based St. Charles Trading Inc., which obtains enough to feed more than 1,000 for a year, according to Vanessa Baker, the company’s marketing director.

“McMurdo Station peaks out at around 1,000 people who rotate in and out and go into the field on different science projects or support the other stations,” Baker said. “The South Pole Station maxes out at about 150 people.”

The items the company secures come from a variety of suppliers, including ADM, Cargill, Morton Salt, Riviana Rice and Kraft, she said. The items are shipped to Kaiyuh Services in California, which transports it all to one of the most remote and coldest places on earth.

St. Charles Trading has been working with Kaiyuh on the Antarctica project since 2020. All told, the effort involves ordering and transporting four metric tons of food, Baker said.

While fresh food is delivered a number of times during Antarctica’s summer — winter in the Northern Hemisphere — most things they need are obtained by the Elgin company, which was founded in 1984 and employs about 100 people.

For example, they can’t get fresh milk delivered so St. Charles Trading sends a year’s supply of powdered milk via Kaiyuh Services, Baker said.

Forecasting and planning for the food order is being done now. In May, a draft order will be sent to Kaiyuh Services.

“We have 12 weeks to bring the order into our warehouse in California,” Kaiyuh project manager Brian Eisenstatt said in a news release on the massive effort. “Once it’s all brought in, that’s when we start packing.”

Packing takes from mid-September until Thanksgiving. Goods are put into specialized food containers that are transported to Port Hueneme in California, where they are loaded onto a resupply vessel en route to New Zealand, Eisenstatt said in the release.

In New Zealand, the ship picks up a few more things before heading to Antarctica. The food should arrive at McMurdo Station on Ross Island by mid-February, where it will be warehoused. The order being readied now will be consumed from October 2024 through February-March 2025.

The items and ingredients provided by St. Charles Trading might not be eaten until 2025. All of the food from the Elgin company can be frozen, an important consideration as it’s going to be stored in a non-temperature-controlled warehouse.

“Over the winter in Antarctica, the food goes into a deep freeze and over the summer, when the sun beats down on the roof of the warehouse containing food that isn’t temperature-sensitive, it can get up into the 50s and 60s,” Eisenstatt said.

For every single researcher working in Antarctica, there are four to five support staff who are responsible for such things as cooking, cleaning, maintaining vehicles and fueling the station, he said.

“There’s so much involved in keeping that place running,” Eisenstatt said. “It is so remote. They must be very self-sustaining.”

Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.

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