The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) published images of the far side of the lunar surface on Monday, August 21st, ahead of the scheduled landing of the Chandrayaan-3 Lander on the moon’s surface.
The far side is also known as the dark side area of the moon as it is always hidden from the earth. The images were captured on August 19th by the Lander Hazard Detection and Avoidance Camera (LHDAC), which is onboard the Chandrayaan-3 Lander.
The LHDAC, which assists in locating a safe landing area—without boulders or deep trenches— during the descent, is developed by the Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre (SAC), a major research and development centre of ISRO.
In a tweet, ISRO informed, “Here are the images of Lunar far side area captured by the Lander Hazard Detection and Avoidance Camera (LHDAC). This camera that assists in locating a safe landing area — without boulders or deep trenches — during the descent is developed by ISRO at SAC.”
ISRO has already released three videos of the moon captured by its third lunar mission carried out by the Chandrayaan-3. One of them was taken by the Lander Position Detection Camera (LPDC) on August 15th.
There was another image of the moon taken by the Lander Imager (LI) Camera-1 just after the separation of the Lander Module from the Propulsion Module on August 17th. Similarly, on August 6th, it shared its first video of the moon as viewed by Chandrayaan-3 during the lunar orbit insertion on August 5th.
The ISRO said on Sunday, August 20th, that the Lander Module, with the rover in its belly, is expected to touch down on the surface of the moon around 6.04pm on August 23rd.
