The very first image of the Moon captured by Chandrayaan-2, India’s ambitious Rs.1,000-crore moon mission, was tweeted by space agency ISRO on Thursday. ISRO says, the Moon’s image captured at a height of about 2,650 km from the moon surface and was taken a day earlier. The image shows two significant landmarks on the moon, the Apollo crater and the Mare Orientale basin.
The Apollo, a 538 km-wide crater named after NASA’s Apollo moon missions, is located on the moon’s southern hemisphere. According to NASA, many smaller craters located inside the Apollo, are named after dead NASA astronauts and officials. Seven such craters take their names after the crew of NASA’s Colombia.
The Mare Orientale, on the other hand, is said to be over 3 billion years old and about 950 km wide. Shaped like a bullseye, it was formed after an impact from an asteroid-shaped object. A very significant landmark on the moon, the Mare Orientale is difficult to look at from the earth, according to NASA.
On Thursday, the journey to the moon, successfully pulled off a critical, taking it closer to the moon. The Chandrayaan 2 said to be, one of the trickiest in the mission, the 20-minute plan, if unsuccessful, would have resulted in the mission bouncing off into deep space. The next significant test for the Chandrayaan 2 is scheduled on September 7, which will have the mission landing on the moon’s south pole.
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