Chandrayaan-3 has entered a critical phase: ISRO chief

Sriharikota. Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft inched closer to its soft landing on the Moon as it successfully underwent a planned orbit reduction procedure to lower its lunar orbit on Sunday. However, according to ISRO chief S Somnath, the most critical phase of Chandrayaan-3 will begin when the spacecraft starts moving closer to the Moon from a 100 km circular orbit. Chandrayaan-3’s orbit determination process will be planned between August 9 and 17 to place the spacecraft in a 100-km circular orbit, Somnath said on Monday, adding that India’s third lunar mission is in good shape. Launched on July 14 by the launch vehicle Mark-III rocket, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is now placed in an elliptical orbit of 170 km x 4,313 km around the Moon. The next critical phase will see a series of maneuvers that will take it closer to the lunar surface. Vikram Lander is expected to land on the Moon on August 23. “Up to 100 km we don’t see any difficulty. The only problem is in accurately estimating the position of the lander from Earth. This measurement is a very important measurement.” We call this the orbit determination process. If it is correct, then the rest of the process can be done,” Somnath said. The ISRO chief said, “This time we have been able to get it down very accurately. The orbit change is happening as per the plan. There is no deviation. So, it shows excellent results, and we are expecting that Everything will be alright.” He said the experience of the Chandrayaan-2, 2019 mission, which was partially successful, was proving very useful as the space agency attempted to land a spacecraft on the Moon. Somnath said, “The experience of Chandrayaan-2 will be very helpful. We examined in detail what possibly went wrong. We reconstructed the scenario and made several modifications in Chandrayaan-3.” He said the images of the Moon from the Chandrayaan-2 mission were used to enhance better positioning and landing area measurements in Chandrayaan-3. “We have gathered more intelligence to deal with contingencies and failures. We went through an extensive testing program to validate all of this,” Somnath said.