This is the story of two robot friends who travelled to the Moon together and explored a place no one — human or robot — had ever visited.
Vikram is a lander — a spacecraft with four strong legs, built to touch down gently on the Moon. He is named after Vikram Sarabhai, the scientist who started India's space programme. Vikram is about as tall as a grown-up elephant and carried special tools: a thermometer to poke into the Moon's soil, a listening device for "moonquakes", and his most precious cargo — his little friend Pragyan.
Pragyan means "wisdom" in Sanskrit. He is a small six-wheeled rover, about the size of a puppy (a 26-kilogram puppy!). After Vikram landed, he opened a ramp like a drawbridge, and Pragyan rolled down slowly onto the Moon dust — leaving India's first wheel tracks on the Moon.
Pragyan zapped the soil with a tiny laser (gently!) to find out what it was made of. He found sulfur and lots of other elements — things scientists had never measured at the south pole before. Vikram's thermometer found something surprising too: the top of the soil was warm like a sunny day, but just 10 centimetres down it was freezing cold — colder than any freezer on Earth!
Vikram even heard the ground rumble — a real moonquake! And before bedtime, he did something nobody expected: he fired his engines and hopped — jumping up and landing again a small step away. It was practice for future missions that will need to take off from the Moon.
When night came to the Moon — a night that lasts 14 Earth days and gets impossibly cold — Vikram and Pragyan curled up and went to sleep at Shiv Shakti Point. They had already finished every single job on their list. They're still there today, holding India's place on the Moon, waiting for the next visitors.