HELSINKI — India will make its second moon landing attempt in 18 days’ time after its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft arrived in lunar orbit Saturday.
Chandrayaan-3 began a roughly 30-minute burn around 9:30 a.m. Eastern, seeing the spacecraft enter an elliptical lunar orbit, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) stated via social media.
“MOX, ISTRAC, that is Chandrayaan-3. I’m feeling lunar gravity,” ISRO Tweeted. “A retro-burning on the Perilune was commanded from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX), ISTRAC, Bengaluru.”
The spacecraft will steadily alter its orbit with a burn to cut back apolune Sunday, Aug. 6. It is going to settle right into a 100-kilometer-altitude, circular polar orbit on Aug. 17.
From here, the Vikram lander will separate from the mission’s propulsion module and enter a 35 x 100-km orbit in preparation for landing.
Final descent and the soft landing attempt is about for Aug. 23. The first landing site is within the vicinity of the lunar South Pole region, situated at 69.37 degrees south latitude and 32.35 degrees east longitude. No previous Moon mission has landed at a lower latitude.
If successful, Chandrayaan-3 will make India only the fourth country on the planet to attain a lunar landing, joining the U.S., the previous Soviet Union and China.
Chandrayaan-3 launched July 14 on a LVM-3 heavy-lift rocket from Satish Dhawan Space Centre into an initial orbit just like a geosynchronous transfer orbit, starting a circuitous journey to the moon.
The spacecraft performed five orbit-raising maneuvers across the next two weeks before making a successful translunar injection burn July 31 (UTC).
European Space Tracking (ESTRACK) is providing ground station support for tracking the mission. ESTRACK has previously supported Chinese lunar missions.
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ISRO selected the prime landing site using high-resolution photographs and data from Chandrayaan-2 orbiter and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The mission is a follow-up to the Chandrayaan-2 landing attempt which experienced a tough landing in 2019 resulting from a software glitch. That mission carried an orbiter which remains to be in operation across the moon.
ISRO says it has studied the teachings from 2019 and upgraded the software for Chandrayaan-3.
The important mission objective is to reveal a secure landing on the lunar surface. Beyond this, the mission will seek to reveal surface operations through the small, 26-kilogram Pragyan rover and conduct in-situ science experiments.
The 1,752-kilogram Vikram lander will deploy the six-wheeled Pragyan rover via a ramp. The solar-powered duo will perform a set of scientific experiments during daytime on the landing site. One period of lunar daylight on the moon lasts for fourteen Earth days. Without radioisotope heater units the spacecraft aren’t expected to survive the deep cold of lunar nighttime.
India’s first lunar mission, the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter, launched in 2008. It spent a 12 months in lunar orbit trying to find evidence of water molecules. It was then deliberately commanded to crash-land onto the lunar surface in 2009. The Chandrayaan-2 mission orbiter remains to be in orbit collecting science data.