So we had to create an artificial moon surface and test our rover and lander," M. Annadurai, who retired as Director, U.R. The moon's surface is covered with craters, rocks and dust and its soil is of different texture as compared to earths. While moon light dinners are known for the human beings, Indian space agency created moon light environment for testing its rover. The ISRO finalised to take the "anorthosite" rocks from Sithampoondi and Kunnamalai villages in Tamil Nadu for moon soil. In order to test the lander, a test bed was created at ISRO's facility at Challakere in Chitradurga district in Karnataka.

Source: Mint July 21, 2019 10:30 UTC