Isro launches Chandrayaan-3 for another attempt at soft landing on moon
With the success of its third lunar mission, India hopes to become the fourth country in the world to land on the moon’s surface and the first to land near the lunar south pole
India’s third lunar spacecraft took a successful flight from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Friday afternoon, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) said. After a 25-hour and 30-minute countdown, the Launch Vehicle Mark-3, formerly known as the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk-III, carrying the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was launched.
“LVM3 M4 / Chandrayaan-3 Mission: LVM3 M4 vehicle successfully launched Chandrayaan-3 into orbit,” Isro said in a tweet after the launch.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that July 14, 2023, will always be “etched in golden letters” in India’s space sector. “Chandrayaan-3, our third lunar mission, will embark on its journey. This remarkable journey will carry the hopes and dreams of our nation,” Modi tweeted before the launch.
Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-up mission to Chandrayaan-2, which aims to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. The spacecraft comprises a lander and rover configuration, which will be carried by a propulsion module until a 100 km lunar orbit.
According to Isro’s mission brochure released ahead of the launch, the propulsion module has a Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and Polari metric measurements of the earth from the lunar orbit.
A follow-up mission to the 2019 Chandrayaan-2, the latest programme aims to demonstrate a safe and soft landing on the moon surface, which could not be achieved during Chandrayaan-2, rover abilities on the moon surface and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments. In the second lunar mission, the soft landing attempt by the Indian space agency might have failed, but Isro managed to successfully place its orbiter in the path, which continues to provide key information.
Isro chairman S Somanath said that it was based on the data and pictures from the orbiter that they were able to take corrective steps for the make landing strategies for Chandrayaan-3
Officials from the department of space said that Chandrayaan-3 consists of an indigenous lander module (LM), a propulsion module (PM), and a rover, with the objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for interplanetary missions.
The lander will have the capability to soft land at a specified lunar site and deploy the rover, which will carry out in-situ chemical analysis of the lunar surface during the course of its mobility.
“The lander and the rover have scientific payloads to carry out experiments on the lunar surface. The main function of PM is to carry the LM from launch vehicle injection till final lunar 100 km circular polar orbit and separate the LM from PM. Apart from this, the propulsion module also has one scientific payload as a value addition which will be operated post separation of lander module. The launcher identified for Chandrayaan-3 is GSLV-Mk3 which will place the integrated module in an Elliptic Parking Orbit (EPO) of size ~170 x 36500 km,” the Chandryaan-3 mission module said.
After entering the orbit of the moon, Chandrayaan-3 is expected to reach the lunar orbit nearly a month after its launch. Its lander (Vikram) and rover (Pragyaan) are expected to land on the moon on August 23.
The landing site for the mission is near the south pole (around 300kms from the south pole) of the moon at 70 degrees latitude. The successful landing of the spacecraft will make India the first country in the world to soft-land near the lunar south pole and the fourth country to have landed on the moon’s surface.
Before this, all the lunar missions have only managed to make a landing in the equatorial region of the moon—a few degrees north or south of the lunar equator. Only the Surveyor-7, launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1968, has managed to land near 40 degrees south latitude, which is the furthest that any spacecraft has landed from the equator.
Soft landings occur when the craft touches down at a safe, slow, and controlled speed. They are particularly necessary on crewed missions or missions in which the craft is expected to take scientific measurements or perform tests after landing, as is the case with the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
Gennady Krasnikov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, congratulated India on successfully launching its third lunar mission, which could set an important benchmark for space missions globally.
“This is a great milestone that India has achieved today. I congratulate the Indian government, the space agency Isro, and the people of India for the successful launch. Russia is also preparing for its lunar mission soon. We are expected to launch Luna 25 around August,” Krasnikov said.
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