Chandrayaan-3 landing: Noida-based tech start-up powers eyes of Pragyaan lunar rover

livemint.com:

A Noida-based tech start-up found itself in the front row as India scripted history on Wednesday with the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3. Omnipresent Robot Technologies has worked closely with ISRO on the moon mission series and now has eyes on the moon - quite literally. The company had developed the Perception Navigation Software that the Pragyaan rover will use for the next two weeks.

The Vikram lander within the spacecraft made a powered vertical descent onto the lunar south pole at 6:04 pm as billions watched from around the globe. It also carried the Pragyaan rover which will now explore the crater-filled lunar surface. “We are very excited and look forward to seeing the Pragyaan rover navigating the lunar surface using our software.

This software was originally developed for Chandrayaan-2, but the rover could not be deployed back then. This is now being used for Chandrayaan-3," CEO Aakash Sinha told PTI. The Shiv Nadar University professor said that the software would capture images of the moon using the two cameras of the lunar rover and stitch them together to generate a 3-D map of the lunar landscape.

This software has been in-built in the rover and the image processing will be done onboard the spacecraft. The final 3D model will be transmitted back to the mission control. Scientists on earth can then take the rover for a tour of the photographed area on the basis of the 3D model of the lunar surface generated by the software.