ChaSTE PROBE

News– Chandrayan’s ChaSTE becomes the first mission to successfully penetrate the soil of a celestial body (at Shiv Shakti landing site of Moon) to deploy a thermal probe.

About ChaSTE (Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment)

• It is one of the payloads aboard the Lander (named Vikram) of the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
• Developed by: The instrument was designed by the Physical Research Lab, Ahmedabad and the Space Physics Lab (SPL), VSSC.
• Objective: It has the objectives of measuring lunar surface temperatures, thermal conductivity, and the temperature gradient to a depth of 100 mm.
• The probe is fitted with 10 individual temperature sensors made of Platinum (Pt-1000). 
• Significance: The findings of the study will provide a comprehensive understanding of the moon’s thermo-physics and its near-surface and sub-surface water-ice distribution, laying the groundwork for future exploration and habitation strategies.

Same experiments by other space agencies: 

• European Space Agency’s Philae lander of the Rosetta spacecraft, landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It’s Multi-Purpose Sensors for Surface and Subsurface Science (MUPUS) instrument onboard was designed to measure temperature by digging into the terrain. However, scientists couldn’t deploy it due to the awkward landing position.
• NASA’s InSight robotic spacecraft landed on Mars in 2018. It carried a temperature-sensing instrument called the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3). It consisted of a self-hammering nail, nicknamed “The Mole”, designed to penetrate 5 m below Mars’s surface. But could penetrate a depth of just 35 cm, unable to get any temperature data.
• While both the instruments (MUPUS and HP3) used a hammering device, the ChaSTE probe was pushed into the soil by a rotating device.