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The launch of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) rocket carrying the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft.
Article informationAuthor, Gita PandeyRole, BBC News – Delhi
4 hours ago
The Indian Space Agency said Chandrayaan-3, India’s latest space mission, has entered lunar orbit.
The spacecraft launched on July 14, carrying an orbiter, lander and rover, with an attempt to install the lander and rover on the lunar surface on August 23 or 24.
If the mission is successful, India will be the first country to land near the moon’s little-explored south pole.
It will also be the fourth to succeed in achieving a soft landing on the moon, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China.
After orbiting Earth for more than a week, the spacecraft was sent into near-lunar orbit on Tuesday.
Chandrayaan-3, the third in India’s lunar exploration program, is expected to have benefited from the success of its previous lunar missions.
This comes 13 years after the country’s first lunar mission in 2008, which detected the presence of water molecules on the moon’s dry surface and proved that the moon has an atmosphere during the day.
In July 2019, Chandrayaan-2 was launched, which also carried an orbiter, lander and rover, but achieved only partial success. The orbital vehicle continues to orbit and study the moon to this day, but the lander and rover failed to land softly and were destroyed during the landing process.
They carefully studied the crash data and carried out simulated drills to avoid holes in Chandrayaan-3, which weighs 3,900 kilograms, at an estimated cost of 6.1 billion rupees (equivalent to $75 million, or $58 million), said Saridhar Panicker Somnath, head of ISRO. million pounds sterling).
The lander (named Vikram, after the founder of Isro) weighs around 1,500kg and carries inside the 26kg rover called Pragyan, a Sanskrit word for wisdom.
On Tuesday, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) tweeted that the spacecraft had completed its orbit around the Earth and headed towards the moon.
“ISRO successfully launched at perihelion, the spacecraft entered lunar orbit, and its next stop is the moon,” the statement read. Perigee is the point closest to Earth in the Moon’s orbit.
Now that the spacecraft has entered lunar orbit, scientists will begin to gradually reduce the rocket’s speed to a point that allows Vikram to land easily.
Once it lands, the six-wheeled rover will fling itself around rocks and craters on the lunar surface, collecting critical data and images to send back to Earth for analysis.
“The rover carries five instruments,” Somnath says, “focusing on discovering the physical properties of the lunar surface, the near-surface atmosphere, and tectonic activity to study what’s going on beneath the surface. I hope to find something new.”
The moon’s south pole remains largely unexplored, with much more surface area still in shadow than the moon’s north pole, and scientists say this means water may be present in the permanently shadowed regions.
It is worth noting that India is not the only country that has its eyes on the moon, as there is a growing global interest in it. Scientists say there is still much to understand about the moon, which is often described as the gateway to deep space.
