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Results from India’s Chandrayaan 3 experiment to benefit future missions eyeing lunar water
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The Chandrayaan 3 lander touted a thermal probe called ChaSTE developed jointly by two Indian institutions SPL and PRL related to the country’s space agency ISRO. The lander deployed and inserted ChaSTE almost 10 centimeters into the lunar soil to take pristine temperature measurements across the lunar day using ten spaced-out sensors. A new study published in Nature shows how the measurements are helping scientists learn exactly how the Sun’s heat propagates down from the Moon’s surface, which has notable implications for planning future polar missions scouting for water ice.
ChaSTE sensors noticed a rather large temperature difference of 50–80°C between the two ends of the probe, owing to the Moon’s soil being a poor conductor of heat. ChaSTE’s measurements from Chandrayaan 3’s near-polar landing site of 69°S are unique because heat flow experiments on earlier Apollo missions and most recently on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander were in near-equatorial locations, thus tailoring to different objectives that aren’t related to understanding water ice deposits on the Moon’s poles. “ChaSTE is the first ever in-situ thermal profiling of the Moon’s near subsurface,” said PRL planetary scientist K. Durga Prasad who is one of the experiment leads.
