New Delhi, July 14: India’s third unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, aimed at exploring the south polar region of the moon, soared into the sky successfully at 2.35 pm on Friday as planned from the second launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) here.
The precise goal is to make a soft and safe landing on the lunar surface, and if the mission is successful, India will only be the fourth country to have achieved the feat, joining the elite club of the US, Russia, and China. The south-polar region of the moon is of intense interest due to the presence of many permanently shadowed craters which could contain water ice and precious minerals.
At the end of the 25-hour and 30-minute countdown, LVM3-M4, India’s largest and heaviest launch vehicle, LVM3-M4, lifted off at 2:35 pm with the 3,900-kg Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, including the lander. Minutes later, it transferred the satellites into the Geo Transfer orbit as scientists, including ISRO Chairman S Somnath and his predecessors, were watching the launch from the Control Command Centre.
Billed as a follow-up mission to Chandrayaan-2 which failed after the lander crash-landed on the moon 48 days later, Chandrayaan-3 will seek to demonstrate end-to-end landing and roving capabilities. The spacecraft will take about 40 days to make a soft landing on the lunar surface which is expected to be between August 23 and 24, eight days lesser than what the Chandrayaan-2 mission took.
The success of Chandrayaan-3 will also help the ISRO fast-tracking its planned manned mission to the space, named Gaganyaan.
The Chandrayaan-3 lander carrying a rover within it will be carried into an orbit around the moon by the propulsion module. A little later, the lander will separate from that module and will attempt to make a soft landing in the south polar region of the moon, which is of intense interest as it has many permanently shadowed craters which could contain water ice and precious minerals.
India’s first unmanned mission, Chandrayaan-1, which took off on October 22, 2008, demonstrated the country’s ability to reach the surface of the moon and discover water on the lunar surface, while the Chandrayaan-2 mission’s aim was to make a soft landing on the moon.
Learning lessons from the failure, the ISRO has made several significant modifications to Friday's mission with officials attributing the 2019 failure to malfunctioning of the onboard computer and propulsion system.
This time around, the lander’s legs have been strengthened, a fifth engine has been removed to reduce the weight, and the landing area has been expanded from 500mx500m (in Chandrayaan-2) to 4kmx2.4 km area in Chandrayaan-3. Several special tests like Integrated Cold and Integrated Hot tests and Lander Leg mechanism performance tests have also been conducted to ensure the success of the mission, the officials added.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission is yet another attempt to achieve the goal with the help of a rover. The spacecraft, according to officials, will have four payloads which will study moon quakes, how the surface of the moon allows heat to flow through it, the plasma environment near the moon's surface, and enable scientists to measure the distance between Earth and moon “very accurately.”
The two rover payloads study composition of the moon’s surface using X-rays and LASER, while the propulsion module payload will explore the Spectro-polarimetric signatures of the habitable planet, Earth. The mission is divided into three phases -- Earth Centric, Lunar Transfer, and Moon Centric.
The work on Chandrayaan-3 began just a few months after the failure of Chandrayaan-2, but the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown delayed ISRO’s plans. By demonstrating its capabilities to soft-land on the moon, the ISRO is also hoping to expand its business as it is already launching private satellites from Sriharikota.
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