By the Rover Parameters Display appears rover has two cameras for photogrammetry, and has moved a little from the Lander....

ISRO new info from Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
All activities are on schedule.
All systems are normal.
🔸Lander Module payloads ILSA, RAMBHA and ChaSTE are turned ON today.
🔸Rover mobility operations have commenced.
🔸SHAPE payload on the Propulsion Module was turned ON on Sunday.
https://twitter.com/isro/status/1694699791505322117

New video from ISRO showing all frames get from the descend camera:
https://twitter.com/isro/status/1694713817916473530

ISRO has released the full landing video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhTQ6bNuP8c

Following that path down puts it at the red X, at aprox -69.37317, 32.32005

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First image of the surface from Chandrayaan, near the Lunar South Pole.
I note apparent layering in rocks, which I attribute to multiple overlapping ejecta layers from the many impact craters in the region.

ISRO image:

Here are the landing sequence stages:

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While watching the landing, someone said only two engines would be used for the touchdown. Here is a flicker gif showing the last seconds of the landing:

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After watching the video and getting little dizzy observing all the different crater geometries I refined the landing site map to the present result.
It could still be off by ~5-10 m relatively speaking. I get long/lat 32.32186 -69.37215 from the map, but this could be off quite a bit.

I was just looking at the full video again. like Jake, and I think this is the location - not very far from Jake's. Plotted on the first version of the map.


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(based on this composite of the last frames):

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The last frame is showing some blowing dust.

This is the point Threadworm identified.

Phil

I have to say that the cross-fading between frames makes this extremely hard to watch IMHO. With MSL we had a low frame rate and we just displayed it with hard cuts at the actual cadence. But maybe others have different taste.

Yes, it's awful. But stepping frame by frame through it, the good frames can be extracted.

Phil

One of my pet peeves...it's horrible.

Fantastic shot from the high resolution camera on Chandrayan 2:

https://twitter.com/chandrayaan_3/status/1694917573744214340

And wouldn't you know... it was still a bit more downrange than any of our guesses. But now we have a final position.

Also, video of rover roll-out onto the surface:

https://twitter.com/isro/status/1694945669721776263



Phil

Well cnmparing it with my estimate I wasn't that far out!

Good to see OHRC is still imaging - you'd think from their data release (or severe lack of it) that they'd stopped bothering with it!

I lined up the new OHRC image on the one I had already with the latest one, and then looked at the first view from the lander camera. My earleir OHRC image is a littel sharper (possibly my processing and it hasn't been 'Twittered').

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I've superimposed that onto Google Earth and get a rough width of that double crater of 4m in total - that sound about right?

I found the area in Jaxa's data and made a little 3D map in QGIS - hopefully the dropbox link will work for you. Open the c3.html file

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/13w7cylqw5xq...cppjv8&dl=0

I think there's a Chandrayaan-1 DEM file that will cover it, but I doubt the resolution will be up to much. I'll have go and see!

I think you've got it turned around. The lander image appears to be looking south (we can see shadows of the lander and on the near, left side of craters), but you've pointed out craters to the east of the lander in the CY-2 image. The two craters we see in the lander image, I would be surprised if they're resolved in the CY-2 image. One is small enough to fit between the shadows of the CY-3 lander structure (i.e., between the ramp shadow and leg shadows), the other is about the size of the ramp exit.

I'll give interpreting the terrain a shot, though I'm definitely of the opinion that this could be wrong.

Always happy to stand corrected- it's so easy to see what you want to see with these things!

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New map, showing update landing position and first drive of the rover. CH2 image of the lander superimposed on LRO image.
White grid lines at 10m, grey ones at 1m, crater diameters in meters.

UPDATE from ISRO
Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
All planned Rover movements have been verified. The Rover has successfully traversed a distance of about 8 meters.

Rover payloads LIBS and APXS are turned ON.

All payloads on the propulsion module, lander module, and rover are performing nominally.

ISRO Twitter

Update to the KML file with the lander image. I think the impact of the descent engines can be seen.

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Fernando

Indian Prime Minister visited ISRO today. Three images were released by him, one of them being OHRC snap which was tweeted and deleted. This explains lack of media released so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beK3C5lMZ6A

https://imgur.com/a/1ZH0XkD

Chandrayaan-2 crash site has been named 'Tiranga Point' while Chandrayaan-3 landing site has been named 'Shiva Shakti Point'

https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/Rules



Can anyone clarify above rule and if there have been any precedents under which names specially for lunar features have been rejected due to being political or religious?

Most such names probably don't make it past the Working Group committee meetings, so they don't need to be rejected.

However, there may be a specific case to point to:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190328215138/...pdf/ser570E.pdf

This document is a report on Chandrayaan 1 to the UNCOPUOS from India, and it says: "Name of landing point as accepted by the International Astronomical Union: Jawahar Sthal" (= Jawahar Point). India may have proposed that name to the IAU via the Working Group, but in fact it was not accepted and is not an official name. And it was most likely not accepted because it is overtly political (refers to Jawaharlal Nehru, former Prime Minster of India).

The new names are also political (Tiranga, the tricolor flag of India) and religious (Shiv Shakti). I think it likely they will remain informal names. And there is nothing wrong with that. I also note that China has been active in naming features at its landing sites with many names officially accepted, but they are mythological or historical or otherwise commemorative.

Phil

Following up... a counter example might be Mare Moscoviense, Sea of Moscow, named by the IAU in 1960 - it had been imaged by Luna 3. This name was allowed over the objections of some in the Working Group because it is politically motivated, but the Soviets made a joke of it: "Moscow is a state of mind".

On the other hand, the GRAIL spacecraft impact point was named the Sally Ride Impact Site, but that is unofficial. And names on Mars like the Thomas Mutch Memorial Station (Viking 1 lander) are also unofficial. There is no problem having unofficial names. Put them on a map and they are part of history, official or not.

Phil

Thank you very much Phil.

Chandrayaan-3: Rover movement and in-place turn.
https://www.isro.gov.in/media_isro/video/ch...place_turn.webm
https://twitter.com/isro/status/1695375894875865574

Shift in shadow suggests they spent significant time tackling that crater, which has been skipped over in this video.

Big congratulations to ISRO and India!

I will repeat a question that someone already asked on this forum: what is the reason for this very strange texture of the surface of the Moon in ISRO pictures? Is it some form of image compression or is the surface extremely finely dimpled on a fine scale ("as if the rain has passed over the sand") more so than other landing sites?

Are there better quality pictures that haven't been released yet?

Does the rover have its own camera?
(sorry for my lack of knowledge)

I'm guessing compression artifacts are the cause of the weird appearance of the early Chandrayaan 3 imagery.
Hopefully there are better pictures that are awaiting release. I don't know for certain though.
The rover has at least two cameras in front that are capable of producing a 3D image of the terrain in front of it.

Some of the Chang'e imagery has/had that weird texture as well. I'm guessing that in the new age of digital photography and image compression, the rough texture of the surface comes out much more pixelated than how we're used to seeing it in the prior generation of exploration images that were developed on film and/or didn't have the benefits of compression.

Thanks! I also hope that they will prepare some "smoother" views over time, because this is a brand new region of the Moon.

Leonard David has posted these fabulous videos showing the rover passing beyond the crater obstacle where it first stopped.

Then it turns, but not enough to direct the rover's front-pointing nav cameras back to the lander.
I think that definitive "selfie" will occur in due course.


Rover videos

It looks like it turns to place the solar panel face-on to the Sun. I wonder if the back side of the solar panel is another solar panel - if the panel is fixed and one-sided it will limit activity somewhat.

I hope the lander has more cameras than the one we have seen operating so far, so a wider view of the site would be possible.

Phil

Judging from the lie of the shadows and the fact that the landing was just after local sunrise, the rover deployment direction is a little west of south.

Yes, there is a smaller solar panel on the inward-facing side of the panel -- see diagram below.



The diagram also shows only 2 forward-facing cameras on the rover, so presumably we will have to wait for charging to complete, followed by a full turn-around of the rover, to get a view of the lander.

First results from lander payload ChaSTE.
https://twitter.com/isro/status/1695725102166671448?s=20

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Not much new info today regarding the rover's drive, but here is corrected map from yesterday, based on the whole released video.

Some good information in this Times of India post date August 28th from Chethan Kumar (Reporter) after an interview with P Kumaravel, the Chandrayaan 3 project director.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/c...w/103111021.cms

Extract:

1. Rover can only generate DEM of 5 m. So, rover can Rove only 5 m at a time.
2. The crater on the right of the image seen after landing was 100 mm deep. They were anxious about it but crossed it.
3. They have challenge with sunlight as there is 12 degrees rotation everyday. Rover has full solar panel on one side only.
4. Data rate is limited.

I got this update from Pradeep who has been posting regularly on Mastodon (his profile https://fosstodon.org/@pradx@mastodon.social )

OHRC image of CY3 Lander

OHRC image of lander has been released again on their website.

https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan3_gallery.html

From ISRO's twitter (link)

And so now we have our first released images from the rover.

When comparing the first two pictures taken by Pragyan rover, I noticed the horizon was matching on the sides of the images. So I made a raw stitching to obtain a first panorama.

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Very nice! The prominent hills are probably the rims of a cluster of secondary craters about 4 km south of the landing site.

Phil

I can be wrong... but i believe they tested the rover on one direction first, they had not rotated it yet, that would justify not having a Lander picture yet.

Definitely. I simulated the view from the LROC quickmap tool and found that those secondary crater rims comprise almost the entirety of image's far horizon. The far-left feature forms part of the raised rim of the Boguslawsky M crater. The shaded part forms the west slope of a very eroded crater that is unnamed (at least in the LROC QuickMap tool).

I don't know if this relies on local cookies to operate but here's a link that, at least when I follow it, reproduces the observed horizon (after allowing for the mesh and texture to load). LROC QuickMap.

"I can be wrong... but i believe they tested the rover on one direction first, they had not rotated it yet, that would justify not having a Lander picture yet. "

There was a statement that a lander image had been taken, but that shadows were unfavourable. Looking at the geometry, the view would have been too close to the direction to the Sun, so much of the lander was in shadow (and possibly there was some glare from the Sun). As the Sun moves over the sky and the rover moves, a suitable geometry should occur later.

Phil

I tried to figure out what kind of compression they might be using, or what the downlink data rate is to see if I could guess how much compression they might need to use, and came up empty. The lander doesn't appear to have a steerable antenna and DSN Now has been showing "data not available" for a while.

It would have to be a very high compression factor to produce this much artifacting, I'm wondering if might just look that way.

Different Moon rover paths.

Nicely done. Apart from minor details, my untrained eye would be hard-pressed to tell these apart.

"It would have to be a very high compression factor to produce this much artifacting, I'm wondering if might just look that way."

I don't believe that these are compression artifacts, or that the surface looks like this. We are seeing some kind of filter, possibly used for noise reduction or an ill-advised method of sharpening the image. I've seen it before in one other place but I was unable to convince the person who was using the filter that it was producing artifacts.

Phil

Usually when they have Filters it became apparent when Sharpening more the image...

Terrain over chang'e sites was very fractal too, till every zoom we used.

I believe on this case what we are seeing is due to the sun lower at skyline and a camera mounted low on a smaller rover, so the camera is near the ground, increasing this pattern.

https://twitter.com/chandrayaan_3/status/1695469821876429066
On the video of rover first walk, it stopped right before a small crater, and continued a good 2 meters after it, and on a lot different Sun inclination.
Probably they get some trouble passing that crater...

Yes, they did. And ISRO stated that they were cautious in assessing that crater. And then after some time, they decided to simply drive right over it, and it worked out OK.
So there was a change in sun angle.

Those fuzzy or grainy images remind me of the Luna 9 images from 1966.

First LIBS spectrum.
https://twitter.com/isro/status/1696529346872451541


Article with more information.
https://www.isro.gov.in/LIBSResults.html

Has India landed on top of a Hill?