Both the mission's Vikram lander and its adorable dog-sized Pragyan rover wasted no time in studying the lunar south pole region with the suite of scientific instruments they brought with them.
1. Presence of sulfur
One of Pragyan's first discoveries was confirming the presence of sulfur on the lunar surface, a feat that was not previously possible from orbiting satellites, the Indian Space Research Organization said in a press release.
The rover fired intense laser pulses at the lunar surface with its Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy instrument. The laser then generated a hot, bright plasma. Scientists then study the light from that plasma to identify the various elements in the sample, like sulfur.
2. Other elements found on the surface
It's not just sulfur — in preliminary analyses, Pragyan has also detected the presence of aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium, and titanium. And ISRO said that it's also hunting for the presence of hydrogen.
The rover's discoveries could help scientists figure out how to mine water on the moon, an advancement that would be critical for future lunar bases.
After all, the lunar poles are some of the most water-rich regions on the moon. They contain enough water ice to fill at least 240,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, per The Planetary Society.
India's Chandrayaan-3 Vikram lander on the moon on August 30, 2023.ISRO3. A potential moonquake
Three days after landing on the moon, the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) payload on the Vikram lander detected an "event," ISRO said in a statement.
ILSA is designed to detect vibrations on the lunar surface, and this "event" was significant compared to the soft rumblings it had measured from the rover driving around on the surface.
"The source of this event is currently under investigation," ISRO said in the statement.
4. Temperature changes underground
Vikram has also measured the soil temperature near the lunar south pole both on the surface and underground, for the first time. The probe measured 3 inches into the soil, and found it was about 140 degrees F colder than at the surface.
India's Pragyan moon rover, whose tracks are shown here, has driven over 300 feet across the lunar south pole region.Indian Space Research Organization
The sunlight from the lunar day doesn't penetrate into the layers beneath the lunar surface.
This phenomenon is something you can observe on Earth too, Paul Hayne, a planetary scientist at University of Colorado Boulder, told Nature. He says it's the same thing you can feel by digging your hands down into the sand on a hot day at the beach — if you wriggle your fingers far enough down, the earth will be cool, unaffected by the suns rays.
Scientists hope the measurements they take will help them understand the moon's thermal behavior, ISRO said.
5. First measurement of the moon's ionosphere
Another device on the Vikram lander called the Langmuir probe, which helps characterize plasma, has been able to measure the density and temperature of the moon's ionosphere for the first time, Nature reported.
There's still a lot to be learned about the moon's south pole region. Right now the solar-powered Vikram lander and its rover are scheduled to reawaken later this month after a 14-day night.
The instruments are set to recharge over this fourteen day period. But there's a chance that the rover might not reawaken, because their electronics might die in the extreme cold of the lunar night, Al Jazeera reported.
Pallava Bagla, an author whose written about India's space exploration, told Al Jazeera that India doesn't have access to technology that withstands temperatures less than -184 Fahrenheit. Nighttime temperatures on the moon have been measured as low as -334 F, according to NASA.
Even so, ISRO reports are optimistic. "Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments! Else, it will forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador," ISRO said on X, formerly Twitter.
When Indian entrepreneur Awais Ahmed founded his satellite startup in Bangalore in 2019, his country was still a year away from opening the space industry to the private sector.- Modest budget -
Prior to the 2020 opening up of the sector, "all Indian space activity was under the supervision of the ISRO space agency, which managed absolutely everything," said Isabelle Sourbes-Verger, an Indian space sector expert at France's National Scientific Research Centre.
Two American scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their work on the technology that led to the breakthrough mRNA vaccines used to protect against COVID-19.
Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman won the Nobel Medicine Prize on Monday for work on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that paved the way for groundbreaking Covid-19 vaccines.The pair, who had been tipped as favourites, "contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times," the jury said. The mRNA vaccines were approved for use in December 2020, and together with other Covid vaccines "have saved millions of lives and prevented severe disease in many more," the jury said.Kariko, 68, and Weissman, 64, longstanding colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in the US, have won a slew of awards for their research, including the prestigious Lasker Award in 2021, often seen as a precursor to the Nobel.In honouring the duo this year, the Nobel committee in Stockholm broke with its usual practice of honouring decades-old research to ensure it stands the test of time.While the prizewinning research dates back to 2005, the first vaccines to use the mRNA technology were those made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna against Covid-19.Unlike traditional vaccines which use weakened virus or a key piece of the virus' protein, mRNA vaccines provide the genetic molecules that tell cells what proteins to make, which simulates an infection and trains the immune system for when it encounters the real virus.The idea was first demonstrated in 1990, but it wasn't until the mid-2000s that Weissman, of the US, and Hungarian-born Kariko developed a technique to control a dangerous inflammatory response seen in animals exposed to these molecules, opening the way to develop safe human vaccines.The honour is surely sweet for Kariko, who toiled in obscurity for years and struggled to convince her superiors of the need for research on "messenger ribonucleic acid".Speaking to Swedish Radio, she said her late mother used to listen to the Nobel prize announcements in the hopes of hearing her daughter's name. "She listened year after year. Unfortunately five years ago she passed at the age of 89. She might be listening from above."In the 1990s, Kariko believed mRNA held the key to treating diseases where having more of the right kind of protein can help -- like repairing the brain after a stroke.But the University of Pennsylvania, where Kariko was on track for a professorship, decided to pull the plug after the grant rejections piled up. - Sweet comeback - Much of the scientific community was at the time focused on using DNA to deliver gene therapy, but Kariko believed that mRNA was also promising since most diseases are not hereditary and don't need solutions that permanently alter our genetics.First though, she had to overcome the problem of the massive inflammatory response in animal experiments, as the immune system sensed an invader and rushed to fight it.Kariko and Weissman discovered that one of the four building blocks of the synthetic mRNA was at fault -- and they could overcome the problem by swapping it out with a modified version.They published a paper on the breakthrough in 2005.Then, in 2015, they found a new way to deliver mRNA into mice, using a fatty coating called "lipid nanoparticles" that prevent the mRNA from degrading, and help place it inside the right part of cells.Both these innovations were key to the Covid-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.Their mRNA technology is now being used to develop other treatments for diseases and illnesses such as cancer, influenza and heart failure.The pair will receive their Nobel prize, consisting of a diploma, a gold medal and a $1 million cheque, from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.The Nobel will however not be the first gold medal in Kariko's family -- her daughter Susan Francia is a two-time time Olympic gold medalist rower.po/jm
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