BENGALURU: Chandrayaan 3 entered lunar orbit on Saturday evening, accomplishing the crucial step of getting into the Moon’s gravity field.
The thruster firing manoeuvre was carried out from the Bengaluru-based ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) around 7 pm.
“Chandrayaan 3 has been successfully inserted into lunar orbit. A retro-burning at the Perilune (point in lunar orbit closest to the Moon) was commanded from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX), ISTRAC, Bengaluru,” ISRO tweeted.
“The next Lunar-bound orbit maneuver is scheduled tomorrow (August 6), around 23:00 hrs IST,” the official Twitter handle for Chandrayaan 3 (chandrayaan_3) tweeted on Saturday.
A little earlier, ISRO shared a message received from the propulsion module, indicating that it had entered the lunar orbit: “MOX, ISTRAC, this is Chandrayaan 3. I am feeling lunar gravity.”
On 6th orbit, module to release lander
Following the lunar-bound orbit manoeuvre on Sunday night, the propulsion module will be subjected to a series of orbit reductions till it settles into an orbit at an altitude of 100km from the lunar surface. On the sixth orbit, the propulsion module will release the lander, which carries the rover, to attempt a soft landing near the Moon’s south pole on August 23.
Once achieved, India will be the first country to have soft-landed near the south pole. While the rover and lander modules will conduct on-site experiments for 14 days, the propulsion module will use its payload, Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE), to study the spectro-polarimetric signatures of Earth in the near-infrared wavelength range while in its orbit-reduction mode before the August 23 landing. Its mission ends once it releases the lander and the rover.