Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled to land on the unexplored south pole of the moon on August 23, but ISRO warned that if any aspect of the lander module looks to be unfavorable, the touchdown would be postponed until August 27.
On Monday, Chandrayaan-3’s lander module established two-way contact with Chandrayaan-2’s orbiter, and according to the ISRO, all systems are operating without a hitch. Potentially additional routes for communication with Chandrayaan-3 are available to ground controllers thanks to the two-way link.
The health of the lander module and the lunar circumstances would be taken into consideration before making the choice to land, according to Nilesh M. Desai, Director of Space Applications Centre-ISRO, Ahmedabad. “On August 23, two hours before Chandrayaan-3 lands on the Moon, we will take a decision on whether or not it will be appropriate to land it at that time based on the health of the lander module and the conditions on the Moon,” he said.
The anticipated landing, according to former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair, is a highly difficult move that requires careful planning since all systems must operate in concert to be successful. It’s a pretty tricky maneuver. In the last two kilometers (above the lunar surface), we almost missed it (a gentle landing on the Moon during the Chandrayaan-2 mission),” he told PTI.
Russian Luna-25 goes down
Russia suffered a setback on Saturday when the Luna-25 Moon mission was aborted after the spacecraft lost control and landed on the moon. It was the first Russian lunar trip since 1976, and its primary goal was to set foot on the Moon’s South Pole first.
The Russian space agency said that during its last pre-landing maneuver, “an emergency situation occurred on board the automatic station, which prevented the maneuver from being performed with the specified parameters.”
The failure of Russia’s Luna-25 moon mission, according to former ISRO chairman K Sivan, won’t have any bearing on the Chandrayaan-3 project.