Chandrayan 3
New Delhi: Chandrayaan-3, scheduled to be launched from Sriharikota this week, will make India the fourth country to land its spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. The launch of Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled for July 14, 2023, at 14:35 hours, IST from the Second Launch Pad, SDSC-SHAR, Sriharikota, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) stated. It said the vehicle’s electrical tests were completed. The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till the 100 km lunar orbit.
Stating this here today in an interview with a news agency, Union Minister of State for Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent USA visit was marked by significant space-related agreements indicating that the countries which had started their Space journey long before India are today looking up to India as an equal collaborator.
Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission of Chandrayaan-2 and is aimed to demonstrate India’s capability in soft landing and roving on the lunar surface. Dr Singh said, there is “tremendous excitement across the country” about the launch of Chandrayaan-3, particularly after the Chandrayaan-2 mission could not yield the desired results because of a lapse just about 13 minutes after the spacecraft began its descent on September 6, 2019.
The Minister said as a successor to Chandrayaan-2, Chandrayaan-3 has undergone a few changes to increase the robustness of the Lander. He said, all these modifications have been subject to exhaustive ground tests and simulations through test beds.
The Lander and Rover module of Chandrayaan-3 is also configured with payloads that would provide data to the scientific community on various properties of Lunar Soil and rocks including its chemical and elemental composition, said Dr Jitendra Singh.
The primary objectives of the Chandrayaan-3 mission are threefold, a) to demonstrate a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface b) to demonstrate rover roving on the moon and c) to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.
The complex mission profile required for the spacecraft to enter the Moon’s orbit has been executed “very precisely”, Dr Singh said.
After a successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the surface of the Moon, the rover, which has six wheels, will come out and is expected to work for 14 days on the Moon. He said that with the support of multiple cameras on the rover, we will be able to receive images.
The Minister recalled that the first in the series of Chandrayaan, namely Chandrayaan-1, is credited for having discovered the presence of water on the surface of the Moon, which was a new revelation for the world and even the most premier Space agencies like the USA’s NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) were fascinated by this discovery and used the inputs for their further experiments. Chandrayyan-3, he said, will be operating at the next level. The Spacecraft will use Launch Vehicle Mark-3 developed by ISRO for its launch, he added.
“After such a quantum rise in our Space expertise under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s regime, India can no longer wait to be left behind in its march to the Moon,” Dr Singh said.
– global bihari bureau
