Bangalore - On Saturday, ISRO achieved a significant milestone in India's third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, successfully guiding it into a lunar orbit without any issues.
The spacecraft's journey began on July 14 when it was launched onboard the LVM-3. Currently, it has completed 22 days of its 40-day lunar journey, and its health is being continuously monitored from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking, and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru, with support from Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) antennas at Byalalu, near Bengaluru, showing normal status.
The successful lunar orbit insertion (LOI) is a crucial step for Chandrayaan-3, and now ISRO faces another critical period of 17 days before attempting to soft-land Vikram, the lander. Following the LOI, ISRO will make minor adjustments to ensure the correct inclination of the spacecraft while reducing its altitude through four lunar-bound manoeuvres. On August 17, the landing module, consisting of Vikram and Pragyan (the rover), will separate from the propulsion module.
Despite all previous manoeuvres going as planned, ISRO remains focused on achieving a Moon landing on August 23. Chandrayaan-3 has been designed with the capability to autonomously handle various dispersion scenarios to ensure a soft and safe landing, setting it apart from its predecessor, Chandrayaan-2.
Once the lander successfully reaches the Moon's surface, several major scientific experiments are planned. These include studying vibrations caused by seismic events or meteorite impacts on the lunar surface, analyzing the near-surface plasma environment, measuring temperature and thermal conductivity up to a depth of 10 cm, examining elemental composition in and around the landing site, and capturing spectral signatures of Earth from the lunar orbit.