India takes second punt at soft lunar landing with launch of Chandrayaan-3 mission
- Reference: 1689372074
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/07/14/india_chandrayaan_3_en_route/
- Source link:
ISRO's LVM3 launch vehicle is carrying a lander and rover to 100km lunar orbit. At the time of writing, the craft had been placed in precise orbit and the health of the spacecraft was [1]reported as normal.
The spacecraft will take 42 days to journey to the Moon, after which it is [2]scheduled to land near the lunar south pole where it will conduct experiments for 14 Earth days.
[3]
Should it succeed, India will become the fourth country after the USSR, USA and China to successfully soft land a mission on the Moon. The most impressive part is that the mission operates on a shoestring budget of $74.5 million. Chandraayan-1 reached the lunar surface in 2008, but it was an impact probe.
[4]India's space agency set to launch lunar lander, rover
[5]India flies – and lands – reusable autonomous spaceplane
[6]India's Mars Orbiter Mission loses contact, burns all fuel, deemed 'non-recoverable'
[7]India's latest rocket flies but payloads don't prosper
India has tried to soft land on the Moon before with Chandrayaan-2 in 2019, but a software glitch caused the lander to crash. The current iteration of the mission incorporates lessons learned from the failed mission, such as stronger legs, more cameras to coordinate descent approach, and other features.
The latest version also includes the Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) instrument aboard the propulsion module, which not only studies Earth, but can look for habitable exoplanets elsewhere.
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The propulsion module will stay in orbit acting as a communication relay satellite for the lander and rover.
An ISRO official [9]said that India would be increasing the amount of launches of its LVM3 vehicle to meet satellite demands.
[10]
Chandrayaan-3 is the seventh mission carried by LVM3 and the third launch over the past year. According to ISRO, the launch vehicle has a 100 percent success rate. ®
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[1] https://twitter.com/isro/status/1679785385935908865
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/07/india_chandrayaan_3_moon_mission/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZLIZ6OA9UKt1AOsBa9BE2wAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/07/india_chandrayaan_3_moon_mission/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/02/asia_tech_news_roundup/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/04/isro_mars_orbiter_mission_ends/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/08/indias_sslv_satellite_unusable_orbit/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZLIZ6OA9UKt1AOsBa9BE2wAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ueCg9bvvQ
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZLIZ6OA9UKt1AOsBa9BE2wAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Looking forward to this one
I'm hoping they succeed with this attempt. Space is hard and if somebody can come up with ways to lower the price, it will benefit all.
I'd like to see some of the suspected caves explored to see if they'd be suitable for a habitat and then robotically built out if they are. We need to find out how fractional G affects the human body. We already know all about 1G and zero G is something of a problem when it come to health. If we are ever going to put people on Mars, we must find out if they will have a chance of surviving before sinking all of the money that it will take to fund that big of a mission.
Good luck
There's a huge difference between LEO and actual space stuff (No offence ISS).... i wish India all the best in this
The Chandrayaan 2 didn’t entirely fail . It had a large orbiter and a comparatively smaller lander and rover. The last two did fail but the orbiter has a 7 year design life and continues to operate to the present day.
Chandrayaan 3 - the current mission - does NOT have an orbiter. It reuses the Chandrayaan 2 one, and takes advantage of the additional payload capacity to send a larger lander and rover.
Chandrayaan 2+3 gives India a substantial orbiter , lander and rover combo it would otherwise not have been able to send in one mission, until it has the next generation heavy launchers in operation.
LVM3 now has a flawless 7/7 launch record, with its payload due to scale up significantly once the Vikas engines are replaced by the SCE200 kerolox ones.
Congrats!
And here's to the third mission working as intended! Good on ya, ISRO!