Chennai, Aug 23,2023: Marking a monumental event in its space journey, India scripted history by becoming the first country to explore the South Polar region when its third Lunar Mission Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft successfully soft landed on the Moon’s surface on Wednesday evening.
The powered descent of the Lander Module (LM), carrying a Rover, on board the Chandrayaan-3, started at 5.44 pm and after the challenging task of performing rough and fine braking maneuvres, it made a soft landing on the moon’s surface at 6.00 pm.
This was ISRO’s third attempt to land Chandrayaan on the Moon four years after its predecessor crashed on the lunar surface.
ISRO came out trumps during the critical process of soft-landing, which was dubbed by many including ISRO officials as 17 minutes of terror.
The lander fired its engines at the right times and altitudes, and used the right amount of fuel, besides scanning the lunar surface for any obstacles before it finally touched down on the Moon.
The Rs 600 crore Chandrayaan-3 mission was launched on July 14 onboard Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM-3) rocket, for a 41-day voyage to reach near the lunar south pole.
The soft-landing was attempted days after Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the Moon after spinning out of control.
After the second and final deboosting operation on August 20, the LM was placed in a 25 km x 134 km orbit around the Moon.
ISRO had been releasing a series of up-close images of the moon, assisting the lander module in determining its position (latitude and longitude) by matching them against an onboard moon reference map.The spacecraft was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on July 14.
A GSLV Mark 3 (LVM 3) heavy-lift launch vehicle was used for the launch of the spacecraft that was placed in the lunar orbit on August 5 and since then it was through a series of orbital manoeuvres been lowered closer to the moon’s surface.
Ever since the July 14 launch, ISRO had been maintaining that the health of the spacecraft remained “normal”. On August 5, Chandrayaan-3 was successfully inserted into the lunar orbit with multiple key manoeuvres thereafter.
