IN PICS: All pictures clicked by Chandrayaan 2's lander — Vikram

• Chandrayaan 2's lander, Vikram, will attempt to soft land on the Moon at 1:30am.
• During the descent, the orbiter and the lander will click a picture of each other.
• These are all the pictures that Chandrayaan 2 has clicked in space so far.

Chandrayaan 2 is going to attempt a soft landing on the near the Moon's South pole making this the southernmost landing ever on the lunar surface.

As the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) lander, Vikram, descends onto the flat plains between the Manzimus C and Simplelius N craters, the lander and orbiter will take pictures of each other.

The first images that Chandrayaan 2's camera captured of Earth

The LI4 camera on Vikram, the lander, sent this picture back to ISRO on 3 August 2019 after launching from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota.

The images show Central America, the top edge of South America, Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico and southern United States.






The first images that Chandrayaan 2's camera captured of the Moon

The first image that Chandrayaan 2 sent back on 21 August 2019 shows the Mare Orientale basin and the Apollo crater on the Moon. They're considered to be important landmarks on the lunar surface.


The second image shows the Moon's North Pole taken from 4,275 kilometers up in space. This is the first picture shared by ISRO taken using the Terrain Mapping Camera-2 (TMC-2). In comparison to the lunar south pole, the north pole has a lot less craters.


TMC-2 also send back pictures of Sommerfeld and Kirkwood craters near the lunar north pole. Sommerfeld is around 169 kilometers in diameter and Kirkwood measures 68 kilometers.


On 23 August 2019, TMC-2 captured a picture of the Jackson, Mach, Mitra and Korolev craters. It also attached a close up of the Jackson crater.

Korolev is a massive crater that around 437 kilometers wide and contains several different craters within its perimeter.

The Mitra crater, around 92 kilometers in diameter, is named after an Indian physicist and Padma Bushan recipient — Sisir Kumar Mitra. He's known as a pioneer in the field of ionosphere and radio physics in India.


The first images were taken using the Nadir sensor but the last one was captured using the AFT sensor.

See also:
Here's why it's going to take 7 weeks for Chandrayaan 2 to reach the Moon

Chandrayaan 2 is on its way to find water on the Moon — and looks like there could be lots of it

Chandrayaan 2 will give India bragging rights even if it doesn't find water