On July 14th, India’s space agency successfully launched Chandrayaan 3, its mission to the Moon with hopes that India might join only four other countries to successfully soft land a spacecraft on the lunar surface. Vikram and Pragyan, two spacecraft in this mission are involved. Together they aim to study its composition.
At 2:35 local time on Nov. 20, a rocket lifted off from Sriharikota spaceport at 2:35 PM local time, carrying both the lunar lander and rover toward space for their month-long mission to explore it. Over 1.4 million viewers tuned into ISRO’s YouTube livestream of liftoff to watch, many offering congratulations or shouts of “Victory to India!” (Jai Hind).
If all goes as planned, India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft will land on the lunar surface August 23. Once on board, its rover is expected to explore and measure seismic activity before returning home on its own accord in less than 75 million. Achieved at such low cost – while also drawing private firms into space exploration. This landmark event would mark an incredible accomplishment for India’s space ecosystem as an achievement worth celebrating while helping attract private firms into low cost exploration efforts.
Chandrayaan-3 differs from past missions by targeting less accessible equatorial regions on the moon; rather, Chandrayaan-3 will travel to its south pole – an area of particular interest to governments and private enterprises because it could contain water ice resources for future human missions. To increase chances of landing successfully, scientists redesigned and upgraded Chandrayaan-3’s lander, strengthening legs to allow higher velocity landing speeds; broadening ranges for touchdown speeds within which spacecrafts touch down range; upgrading avionics also allows spacecrafts to assess speed through lunar atmosphere descent – in short enhancing chances of landing successfully.
Even when all goes according to plan, landing is still extremely challenging; three of four attempts made previously by ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 to land have failed during its final descent and crashed as planned in 2019. Before the launch, scientists conducted extensive testing to identify any likely failure points and find ways to prevent them. According to ISRO chairman S. Somanath at a press briefing held July 6, they took an “anti-failure design approach”. “We have identified potential failures, and devised plans to prevent them. One such measure involves employing new software that interprets spacecraft speed from video images instead of solely static pictures as Chandrayaan-2 did.” Somanath called this new technology “a game-changer”, noting its importance in ensuring safe landing of spacecraft and rovers on lunar surfaces. Furthermore, Somanath noted how similar systems could be utilized for future missions by cooperating nations or training astronauts for space travel.
