Science results from India’s Chandrayaan 3 Moon mission | Moon Monday #275

India’s Chandrayaan 3 lunar landing at the near-polar location of 69.37°S, 32.32°E in August 2023 marked a key moment for the country’s space program. Its nominal touchdown also maintained the momentum for the world’s march to the Moon. A year later, ISRO finally made available a set of peer-reviewed Chandrayaan 3 payload data online on its portal, accessible by anyone after free registration. ISRO has made its planetary missions data portal compliant with NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS). And so just as with the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter, Chandrayaan 3 data is available in the latest PDS4 format for international researchers to utilize with less friction than before. Chandrayaan 3 has produced a host of science results, not all of which ISRO has compiled or contextualized. Unfortunately with spaceflight, the flight parts always get more formal communications as well as media coverage globally than actual outcomes (or lack of them) from the missions. To that end, I’ve compiled and…