Chandrayaan 3 Update: India’s determined third Moon ission’s spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 on Monday had completed another manoeuvre making it even more closer to the moon’s surface, ISRO said.
The national space agency headquartered here said the spacecraft has now achieved a “near-circular orbit” around the moon. After its launch on July 14, Chandrayaan-3 entered into the moon’s orbit on August 5, following which two orbit reduction manoeuvres were completed on August 6 and 9.
ISRO said in a tweet “”Orbit circularisation phase commences. Precise manoeuvre performed today has achieved a near-circular orbit of 150 kmx177 km”.
The next manoeuvre is planned for August 16, around 8:30 am, it said.
As the mission moved forward, a series of manoeuvres are being performed by ISRO to gradually reduce Chandrayaan-3’s orbit and position the spacecraft over the lunar poles.
According to ISRO sources, one more manoeuvre is planned to be performed on the spacecraft on August 16 to reach 100 km orbit, after which the landing module, comprising the lander and rover will get seperate from the propulsion module.
The lander is expected to undergo a “deboost” (Slowing down process
) to make a soft landing on the south polar region of the Moon on August 23.
Last week, ISRO Chairman S Somnath said the most critical part of the landing is the process of bringing the velocity of the lander from 30 km height to the final landing, and that the ability to transfer the spacecraft from horizontal to vertical direction is the “trick we have to play” here.
He further added “The velocity at the start of the landing process is almost 1.68 km per second, but this speed is horizontal to the surface of the moon. The Chandrayaan 3 here is tilted almost 90 degrees, it has to become vertical. So this whole process of turning from horizontal to vertical is a very interesting calculation mathematically. We have done a lot of simulations. It is here where we had the problem last time (Chandrayaan 2).”
The objectives of Chandrayaan-3 are to make a safe and soft landing on the moon’s surface, to demonstrate rover roving on the Moon, and to conduct scientific experiments.
The lander will have the capability to soft land at a specified lunar site and deploy the rover that will carry out chemical analysis of the Moon’s surface throughout its mobility course.
The lander and the rover both are equipped with scientific payloads to carry out experiments on the lunar surface.
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