Chennai, July 20 (Agency) India on Thursday celebrated International Moon Day-2023 by propelling its third Moon Mission Chandrayaan-3–to explore the hitherto unexplored Lunar south pole–a step closer to the moon by raising its orbit for the fourth time. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday successfully performed the fourth Orbit raising maneuver. In a tweet on Chandrayaan-3 Mission update, ISRO said” India celebrates #InternationalMoonDay 2023 by propelling Chandrayaan-3 a step closer to the Moon”. The fourth orbit-raising maneuver (Earth-bound perigee firing) was performed successfully from ISTRAC/ISRO, Bengaluru. “The next firing is planned for July 25, 2023, between 2 and 3 pm IST”, it said.
Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was launched from the Sriharikota on July 14. After the first orbit raising manoeuvre (Earthbound firing-1), was performed by the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru, the second orbit-raising maneuver (Earth- bound apogee firing) was performed successfully on Monday, the third maneuver (Earth-bound perigee firing) on Tuesday and the fourth today. ISRO has planned the trans lunar insertion of Chandrayaan-3 for August 1. The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was successfully launched by ISRO’s heaviest launch vehicle LVM3-M4 and after a flight duration of about 16 minutes, it was precisely placed in an elliptic parking orbit of 36,500 km x 170 km. ISRO is planning the technically challenging soft landing of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft in the lunar surface at 5.47 p.m. on August 23, ISRO Chairman S.Somanath said after the launch at Sriharikota. The Chandrayaan-3 consists of an indigenous lander module (LM), propulsion module (PM), and a rover with the objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for future inter-planetary missions.
The success of Chandrayaan-3 will make it the surface mission closest to the lunar south pole to date, a region of the moon that has been found to be geologically unique and host to spots in permanent shadow. A perfect soft landing on the Moon’s surface will make India the fourth country to accomplish this feat, thereby joining a select group of spacefaring nations. Only USA, the then Soviet Union and China have achieved this feat. India too nearly achieved in its maiden attempt when it launched Chandrayaan-2 in July 2019, before the lander crash landed very close to the landing spot, making the mission about 99.99 per cent success. Through Chandrayaan-3 mission, ISRO is crossing new frontiers by demonstrating soft landing on lunar surface by its lunar module and demonstrate roving on the lunar terrain. It is expected to be supportive to ISRO’s future interplanetary missions. ISRO said Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.