BENGALURU: India’s mission to the Moon inches closer to the lunar surface, as the soft landing day of August 23 approaches. On Friday, in a significant advancement, the Lander Module (LM) underwent a successful deboosting operation.
ISRO, in a statement said, “Lander Module successfully underwent a deboosting operation that reduced its orbit to 113km x 157km.” Vikram Lander and Pragyan Rover are in good health, according to the space agency. The deboosting operation is performed to slow down the module to allow it to enter a slightly lower orbit of the Moon.
The operation performed on Friday was one of the two deboosters. “The second deboosting operation is scheduled for August 20, 2023, around 0200 hrs IST,” ISRO informed on platform X. The coming week will be crucial for India’s ambitious Chandrayaan 3 mission.
The first debooster process places LM in an orbit where the perilune (closest point to the Moon) is 30km and apolune (farthest point from the Moon) is 100km, according to reports.
ISRO Chairman S Somanath had recently said the most critical part of the landing will be the process of reducing the velocity of the lander from 30km height to the final landing, and the ability to reorient the spacecraft from horizontal to vertical direction.
"This is the trick we have to play here," he said.
"The velocity at the starting of the landing process is almost 1.68 km per second, but (at) this speed (the lander) is horizontal to the surface of the moon. The Chandrayaan-3 here is tilted almost 90 degrees, it has to become vertical. So, this whole process of turning from horizontal to vertical is a very interesting calculation mathematically. We have done a lot of simulations. It is here where we had the problem last time (Chandrayaan-2)," Somanath explained, as reported by PTI.
Latest images of Moon
ISRO also shared images recorded by Vikram Lander on August 15 and August 17, after the lander separated from the propulsion module and completed another manoeuvre. The stellar images were taken by the Lander Imager (LI) Camera-1, said the space agency.
“Moon as captured by the Lander Position Detection Camera (LPDC) on August 15, 2023,” said the official handle of Chandrayaan- 3 Mission on X (LVM3-M4/Chandrayaan 3 Mission).
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The images and videos show different craters of the Moon. One of the images showed the Giordano Bruno crater, the youngest large crater on the Moon. The videos also revealed two other craters -- Harkhebi J crater and Fabry. On August 23, India is set to make history by being the fourth country to land on the Moon.
(With inputs from PTI)