NASA’s spacecraft ‘pings’ Chandrayaan-3 Vikram, method to help in precise location tracking technology

A laser instrument aboard NASA's robotic spacecraft orbiting the Moon has successfully 'pinged' India's Chandrayaan-3 mission's Vikram lander, marking a breakthrough in precise location tracking technology, the US space agency confirmed.

"At 3 p.m. EST on Dec. 12, 2023, NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) pointed its laser altimeter instrument toward Vikram. The lander was 62 miles, or 100 kilometers, away from LRO, near Manzinus crater in the Moon’s South Pole region, when LRO transmitted laser pulses toward it," NASA said in a statement.

The moment of triumph for NASA scientists was when the orbiter registered light bouncing back from a small NASA retroreflector on Vikram lander.

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It must be noted thatthe locations of Earth-orbiting satellites are observed by sending laser pulses and measuring the time the light takes to bounce back.

This novel method of pinpointing targets on the lunar surface by sending laser pulses "from a moving spacecraft to a stationary one" to know the precise location has various applications,as per NASA scientists.

“We’ve showed that we can locate our retroreflector on the surface from the Moon’s orbit,” said Xiaoli Sun, who spearheaded the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This team developed the Vikram retroreflector in collaboration with NASA and ISRO.

“The next step is to improve the technique so that it can become routine for missions that want to use these retroreflectors in the future,"Sun added.

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The Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) on Chandrayaan-3's lander, a two-inch-wide device with eight quartz-corner-cube prisms, is expected to serve as a fiducial point for precise location references on the Moon.

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Retroreflectors, known for their durability and simplicity, have been utilised for various scientific and exploratory purposes since the Apollo era. NASA's retroreflector has already contributed to revealing the Moon's gradual movement away from Earth at a rate of 3.8 centimetres per year.

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NASA said that inthe future, these retroreflectors "could guide Artemis astronauts to the surface in the dark, for example, or mark the locations of spacecraft already on the surface, helping astronauts or uncrewed spacecraft land next to them."

(With inputs from agencies)