Chandrayaan-3, India’s third lunar mission, was successfully launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) at 2:35 on Friday. India plans to attempt its fourth successful moon landing on August 23.
Since Chandrayaan-2, the second mission, was successful up to that point four years ago, Isro has worked diligently to guarantee that the landing proceeds well. Isro authorities have labelled the mission a “part failure” because, despite the fact that the spacecraft’s lander and rover could not achieve their scientific goals, the orbiter was inserted into the moon’s orbit and is still sending back important information and images from the moon.
“We performed a crash landing because we came in at a greater velocity. However, if you look at the mission as a whole, we have already mastered the part of reaching the moon in past trips, according to an Isro official who wished to remain unnamed.
The five engines that were utilised to lower the lander’s velocity generated a larger thrust than was expected, according to the failure analysis report created by Isro following Chandrayaan-2.
In order to achieve a gentle vertical drop, the Vikram lander was designed to lose the majority of its velocity by the time it was 400 metres or so from the lunar surface and begin the process of hovering over the selected landing spot. But because of its great speed, it collided into the moon’s surface.
“As this larger push was being attained, mistakes on account of this difference gradually began to accumulate. The camera costing phase is when this happens. The craft should preferably be stable throughout this time in order to capture images. Corrections can be done in real time if necessary, however we choose not to do that. At the very end, we just began to fix this. When all these mistakes added up, which was a little more than we anticipated, the ship began to spin quite quickly. In an interview with HT before to the launch, Somanath said that this made it difficult for the craft to turn.
Four engines power Chandrayaan-3.
In a 500m by 500m region, the Chandrayaan-2 lander was supposed to touch down. The lander had little flexibility as a result. The landing area for Chandrayaan-3 has been expanded to 4 km by 2.5 km.
In order to lessen the likelihood of failure, Isro made the lander stronger, with stronger legs and a bigger fuel capacity. The vessel now has greater freedom to respond to unforeseen mission-related faults and even to manoeuvre inside the landing zone before touchdown.
