ISRO reportedly chose not to equip these robotic pioneers with the commonly used radioisotope heater units.
Since the 1970s, such heating systems have been standard in moon missions. For instance, the Lunokhod 1, the world's first successful lunar rover, covered over 10 kilometers in 10 months and used solar cells to charge its batteries during the lunar day. Lunokhod 1 relied on the heat generated by a polonium-210 radioisotope heater to survive the lunar night.
The Vikram lander even outperformed expectations when it managed a surprising "hop" on the moon's surface, propelling itself closer to Pragyan by about 16 inches . At that time, Pragyan had already been put into sleep mode.Before starting their lunar night rest, Pragyan's batteries were fully charged, ISRO indicated in a post on X, the social media platform formerly Twitter. Arun Sinha, a former senior scientist at ISRO, explained to Space.
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