The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft of India’s ambitious third lunar exploration mission conducted another maneuver on Monday to bring it closer to the lunar surface, ISRO said.
The space agency, based here, said the spacecraft has now achieved a “near circular orbit” around the moon.
After Chandrayaan-3 was launched on July 14, it entered lunar orbit on August 5, followed by two de-orbit operations on August 6 and 9.
ISRO said in a tweet: “Orbit circularization phase begins. Precise maneuvers performed today have achieved a near-circular orbit of 150 km x 177 km.”
The next surgery is scheduled for August 16th at approximately 8:30 am.
As the mission progresses, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is conducting a series of exercises to gradually shrink Chandrayaan-3’s orbit and position it over the moon’s poles.
According to ISRO sources, the spacecraft will perform another maneuver on August 16 to reach a 100-kilometer orbit, after which the landing module consisting of the lander and rover will detach from the propulsion module.
After that, the lander is expected to undergo a “deceleration” (deceleration process) and make a soft landing in the South Pole region of the Moon on August 23.
Last week, ISRO Chairman S Somnath said that the most critical part of landing is the process of bringing the speed of the lander from an altitude of 30 kilometers to the final touchdown, while the ability to transfer the spacecraft from horizontal to vertical is “we have to be here Play “tricks”.
He said: “The speed at the beginning of the landing process was almost 1.68 kilometers per second, but this speed is horizontal to the surface of the moon. Chandrayaan-3 is tilted almost 90 degrees here, and it has to become vertical. So this turns from horizontal to The whole vertical thing is a really interesting math. We do a lot of simulations. That’s where we had problems last time (Chandrayaan 2).” Also, you have to make sure that the fuel consumption is less, the distance calculations are correct, all the algorithms work work.
“The extensive simulations are gone, the guidance design has been changed, and a lot of the algorithms are in place to make sure that the required dispersion is handled through all these stages … to try and make a proper landing,” he said.
In the three weeks since its launch on July 14, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has lifted the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft into an orbit farther and farther away from Earth.
Then, on Aug. 1, through a crucial maneuver — a slingshot maneuver — the spacecraft successfully flew from Earth orbit to the Moon. Following this cross-moon injection, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft detached from Earth orbit and began following a path that would bring it near the Moon.
Chandrayaan-3 is the follow-up mission to Chandrayaan-2, designed to demonstrate the end-to-end capability of safely landing and roaming on the lunar surface.
Consisting of an indigenous propulsion module, a lander module and a rover, it is designed to develop and demonstrate new technologies needed for interstellar missions.
The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration up to 100 km lunar orbit. The propulsion module has the Spectropolarimetry of a Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study spectroscopic and polarimetric measurements of Earth from lunar orbit.
The mission objectives of Chandrayaan-3 are to demonstrate a safe soft landing on the lunar surface, demonstrate a lunar rover, and conduct in situ scientific experiments.
The lander will be able to soft-land at designated lunar sites and deploy the rover to conduct in-situ chemical analyzes of the lunar surface as it moves.
Landers and rovers have science payloads to conduct experiments on the lunar surface.
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