Post by Admin on Aug 23, 2023 12:38:57 GMT
Chandrayaan-3, India's latest mission to the moon, is set to undertake its key final stage today as the unmanned spacecraft attempts a soft landing on the lunar surface — 40 days after its launch from the southern part of the South Asian nation.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will livestream the launch that will begin at 4:50 am PT on August 23 (5:20 pm IST), more than half an hour before the targeted landing time of 5:34 am PT (6:04pm IST).
On Tuesday, ISRO confirmed that the mission was on schedule and said the systems were undergoing regular checks, and smooth sailing continued.
Launched in July through ISRO's Launch Vehicle Mark-3 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in South India's Sriharikota island, Chandrayaan-3 is India's third lunar mission. It aims to land on the lunar south pole, far from the side facing the Earth. It is believed that this region may hold essential secrets about the moon, including the potential existence of frozen water that could help support human habitation on the natural satellite and could potentially be used as fuel for future missions to distant locations.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission is the follow-up to the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, which crashed before landing on the moon in 2019. The Indian space agency has made a number of improvements in the Chandrayaan-3 lander to handle additional dispersion, as well as included updated sensors and integrated improved software and propulsion systems to minimize the chances of any failures this time.
Apart from the lander, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft includes a propulsion module and a rover. The latter is identical to that of Chandrayaan-2.
The spacecraft includes sensors such as a seismometer, thermal probe, X-ray and laser spectrometer. It also carries a retroflector from NASA.