Key Points
Laser instrument onboard a NASA spacecraft orbiting the Moon has successfully pinged the Vikram lander of India's Chandrayaan-3 mission, the US space agency said...
The laser beam was transmitted and reflected between the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and an Oreo-sized device on Vikram lander, opening the door to a new style of precisely locating targets on the Moon's surface, NASA said...
The lander was 100 kilometers away from LRO, near Manzinus crater in the Moon's south pole region, when LRO transmitted laser pulses towards it on December 12 last year...
However, using the technique in reverse to send laser pulses from a moving spacecraft to a stationary one to determine its precise location has many applications at the Moon, scientists said.. "We've showed that we can locate our retroreflector on the surface from the Moon's orbit," said Xiaoli Sun, who led the team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, that developed the retroreflector on Vikram as part of a partnership between NASA and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)...
Reacting to the development, ISRO said the Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) on the Chandrayaan-3 lander has begun serving as a fiducial point (precisely located markers for reference) on the Moon...
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