NEW DELHI: Chandrayaan-3, India’s third lunar exploration mission, will make India the fourth country to land its spacecraft on the surface of the Moon and demonstrate the country’s abilities for safe and soft landing on lunar surface.
The countdown for the launch of the mission began on Thursday at 14:35:17 IST ahead of the lift-off on Friday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The spacecraft will be launched on a GSLV Mark 3 (LVM 3) heavy-lift launch vehicle.
A day ahead of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, a team of ISRO scientists on Thursday visited and offered prayers at Tirupathi Venkatachalapathy Temple in Andhra Pradesh with a miniature model of Chandrayaan-3. This will be Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) follow-up attempt after the Chandrayaan-2 mission faced challenges during its soft landing in 2019. During the Chandrayaan-2 mission, ISRO lost contact with the lander when it was just a notch away from the Moon’s surface.
The ‘Launch Rehearsal’, simulating the entire launch preparation and process, has been concluded by the ISRO. If all goes well, Chandrayaan-3 will be the first spacecraft to land on Moon’s South Pole, demonstrating India’s technical prowess and bold spacefaring ambitions.
Chandrayaan-3 mission will demonstrate a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, rover roving on the Moon and conducting in-situ scientific experiments. ISRO invited citizens to witness the launch of the much-awaited Chandrayaan-3 from the viewing gallery at Sriharikota.
The journey from Earth to the Moon for the spacecraft is estimated to take around a month and the landing is expected on August 23. Upon landing, it will operate for one lunar day, which is approximately 14 Earth days.
K Sivan, former director of ISRO, said that the success of mission Chandrayan-3 will give a morale boost to programs like Gaganyan.
“We understood what went wrong with Chandrayan-2 when we could not land on the Moon’s surface. We recreated the failure modes and we ensured that this time, we have success. The challenge is the same as Chandrayan-2, same environment for landing. This time, we hope that we have done enough based on the lesson of Chandrayan-2 that gives us more confidence. In space, there are always unknown unknowns…hope that all issues are addressed and that we emerge with success”, he said.
“We are getting tech landing on a celestial body. By landing successfully, we will acquire landing technology and it will be good for future generations. A number of scientific experiments are planned and scientists will have more knowledge of the Moon’s geology and the Earth’s origin”, he added.
Mylswamy Annadurai, mission director of Chandrayaan-1, said Chandrayaan-3 is a very important mission. “We have shown that we can orbit, but we could not do a soft landing, By doing so this time, we can show that Chandrayan-1 was not an isolated success. Internationally, the world is looking back to the Moon, the real seeding for that came from Chandrayaan-1. So, we need to make this mission successful”, he said.
“Hard lessons were learnt from Chandrayaan 1 and 2. At every step, we are supposed to have a plan B. There were some setbacks in Chandrayaan- 2. This time, we are back on track. We are clear on what we want to do and it will ensure we can softly land on the surface of the Moon. The target of landing is also larger, all elements have been tested multiple times, we hope this is a success…”, he added.
Chandrayaan-3’s development phase commenced in January 2020 with plans to launch it somewhere in 2021, but the Covid-19 pandemic caused delays in the development process.
The major discovery of the Chandrayaan-1 mission, launched in 2008, is the detection of water (H2O) and hydroxyl (OH) on the lunar surface. Data also revealed their enhanced abundance towards the polar region.
The primary science objective of the mission was to prepare a three-dimensional atlas of both the near and far sides of the Moon and to conduct chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface with high spatial resolution, the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre under ISRO had said.
The Moon serves as a repository of Earth’s past and a successful lunar mission by India will help in enhancing life on Earth and prepare to explore the rest of the solar system — and beyond.
Director of Indian Space and Research Organisation (ISRO), S Somanath, had said that if everything goes well, the spacecraft will land on the Moon on August 23. The date has been decided based on sunrise on the Moon but, if it gets delayed, then landing may take place next month, he said. (ANI)