Another moment of pride in making, for us and our country.
Chandrayaan -3 successfully launched using a GSLV Mark -3 (LVM-3).
Image Courtesy: JanBharat Times
In Succession to the series in its Chandrayaan mission, ISRO successfully launched India’s third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3 in its 600-crore moon mission on Friday, the 14th of July at 2:35 p.m. on Launch Vehicle Mark-3 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, which will travel for nearly 42 days before attempting its soft landing on the lunar surface on August 23rd at 5:47 p.m.
Chandrayaan-3 is a part of ISRO’s Chandrayaan series that focuses on lunar exploration and aims to showcase the technology needed for interplanetary travel and end-to-end capability of safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. It follows the much talked about Chandrayaan-2 that was launched in July 2019 and tasted heights of success but unfortunately, the Lander had crashed just seconds before landing.
Chandrayaan-3 consists of an indigenously built Lander module (LM), a Propulsion module (PM), and a Rover. The Lander has the capacity to soft land at a specified lunar site and deploy the Rover on the lunar surface which will then carry out in-situ chemical analysis of the surface during the course of its mobility.
Sixteen minutes after the successful lift-off, the propulsion module successfully separated from the rocket and was injected into the earth’s internal orbit, where it will orbit in an elliptical cycle 5-6 times at 170 km. being the closest and 36,500 being the farthest distance from the earth before moving towards the lunar orbit.
The propulsion module will carry the lander and the rover to 100 km. lunar orbit. This module also has the Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload required to study the spectral and polarimetric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit. The various payloads incorporated in the lander and the rover for studying the technicalities are—–
The Lander Payloads:
Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (chaSTE) to measure the thermal conductivity and temperature, an Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) for measuring seismicity around the landing site, and a Langmuir Probe (LP) to estimate its plasma density and its variations.
A passive Laser Retroreflector Array from NASA has also been accommodated in it for lunar laser ranging studies.
The Rover Payloads:
The Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) for deriving the elemental composition in the vicinity of the landing site Through this mission scientists aim towards demonstrating various capabilities including reaching the orbit of the moon, making a soft landing on the lunar surface using the lander and a rover coming out of it to study the moon’s surface. This mission involves cooperation from other space agencies from Europe, Australia, and the U.S. too.
“India has taken a lead in space technology. Today Americans also value Indian talent and astronauts. In fact, they are looking forward to sending an Indian astronaut into space. I’m so proud that we’ve all witnessed history in the making and thank PM Modi and Congratulate Team ISRO for this success”, said Union Minister Jitendra Singh after the successful launch of the Propulsion Module
If this mission is pulled off successfully then India will join an exclusive list of just three other countries that have managed soft landing on the lunar surface viz. U.S., Erstwhile Soviet Union, and most recently China.
Getting to the moon is a very complex mechanism factoring in the calculated distance to be traveled by spacecraft, successful exit from Earth’s orbit and placement in Lunar orbit and a failure can happen anywhere on this long long journey, ISRO chairman S. Somanath told the PTI.
Then the difference in atmosphere from that of Earth due to which the spacecraft does not have the luxury of assistance of Earth’s atmospheric layer. Hence the slowing down mechanism of the spacecraft has to be extremely precise for which the system needs a lot of fuel to slow down itself quickly enough. Moreover, navigating on the moon in the absence of GPS and satellite network, in which the last few kms. are the most crucial, and this is made even more difficult due to the moon’s uneven surface littered with craters and boulders, landing in which means failure of the complete mission.
Then the temperatures that drop drastically during the fifteen days of moons night time and the possibility of systems surviving that period and the batteries charging up as the new day dawns has to be factored in. Also, in contrast to the popular belief that the moon does not have any atmosphere, there are gasses that come out of it. These gasses get ionized and stay very close to the surface and this changes with day and night on the moon.
But at the end of it as they say, “where there is a will, there is a way”.
Though this ambitious mission has taken just the first baby step but with the expertise developed during Chandrayaan-2, let’s all rejoice in its first victory and keep our hands folded and hopes high this time and wait to celebrate the beautiful landing that was just a near miss in Chandrayaan-2.
Let’s all wait to rejoice on the 23rd of August when the rover will beautifully come out of the lander and mark India’s territory on the moon and the world map.
Amen Jai Hind
The Momma Clan 
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