Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Watch India’s Chandrayaan-3 try to land on the Moon here at 8:34AM ET

The craft will attempt to touch down on the lunar south pole early Wednesday morning.


Will Shanklin
·Contributing Reporter
Tue, August 22, 2023 

ASSOCIATED PRESS


We’ll soon learn if India will be the first nation to nail a soft landing on the moon’s south pole. The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 mission, which launched on July 14th and entered lunar orbit on August 5th, will attempt to touch down on Wednesday at around 8:34AM EDT. It follows Russia’s attempt to beat India to the punch that ended badly. The ISRO’s live telecast (watch below) is scheduled to begin at 3:50AM EDT.

The Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander will try to touch down near the Moon’s south pole, which is believed to contain water ice. It could provide crucial water, oxygen and fuel for future lunar missions and bases. However, touching down could prove challenging as the region is known for rugged terrain and shadowy craters. This mission’s immediate predecessor, the Chandrayaan-2, crashed in 2019 as it descended to the lunar south pole.

Chandrayaan-3 uses a “failure-based design” to incorporate lessons from the 2019 “hard landing.” The new version includes an expanded landing area, software upgrades and more redundant systems to back up potential outages.

The IRSO’s X (formerly Twitter) account posted early Tuesday morning, “The mission is on schedule. Systems are undergoing regular checks. Smooth sailing is continuing.” It also posted pictures of the Moon’s surface taken from orbit.

You can tune in here early Wednesday morning (US time) to view the Indian lander’s descent.

Chandrayaan-3, India's latest mission to the moon, is set to undertake its key final stage today as the unmanned spacecraft attempts a soft landing on the lunar surface — 40 days after its launch from the southern part of the South Asian nation.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will livestream the launch that will begin at 4:50 am PT on August 23 (5:20 pm IST), more than half an hour before the targeted landing time of 5:34 am PT (6:04pm IST).

On Tuesday, ISRO confirmed that the mission was on schedule and said the systems were undergoing regular checks, and smooth sailing continued.

Launched in July through ISRO's Launch Vehicle Mark-3 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in South India's Sriharikota island, Chandrayaan-3 is India's third lunar mission. It aims to land on the lunar south pole, far from the side facing the Earth. It is believed that this region may hold essential secrets about the moon, including the potential existence of frozen water that could help support human habitation on the natural satellite and could potentially be used as fuel for future missions to distant locations.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission is the follow-up to the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, which crashed before landing on the moon in 2019. The Indian space agency has made a number of improvements in the Chandrayaan-3 lander to handle additional dispersion, as well as included updated sensors and integrated improved software and propulsion systems to minimize the chances of any failures this time.

Apart from the lander, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft includes a propulsion module and a rover. The latter is identical to that of Chandrayaan-2.

The spacecraft includes sensors such as a seismometer, thermal probe, X-ray and laser spectrometer. It also carries a retroflector from NASA.

Earlier this week, ISRO shared images of the moon's far side taken by the Chandrayaan-3 lander called Vikram. The Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, which is orbiting the moon and will assist in connecting the Chandrayaan-3 rover with the Earth's space station, also recently communicated with the new spacecraft's lander.

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Should Chandrayaan-3 be successful, India will become the first country to land on the lunar south pole. The mission's success will also make the country the fourth to achieve a soft landing on the moon, following the United States, former Soviet Union and China. Earlier this month, Russia attempted to take on India by launching its moon landing spacecraft Luna-25. The Russian spacecraft, however, collided onto the moon's surface after losing control on Saturday.

India's historic cut-price Moon mission set for touchdown

Aishwarya KUMAR
Tue, August 22, 2023 

An Indian Space Research Organisation rocket carrying the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft lifts off on July 14, 2023 (-)


India readied Wednesday for its latest attempted Moon landing, a historic moment for the world's most populous nation as it rapidly closes in on milestones set by global space powers.

Chandrayaan-3, which means "Mooncraft" in Sanskrit, is scheduled to touch down shortly after 6:00 pm India time (1230 GMT) near the little-explored lunar south pole, in what would be a world first for any space programme.

A previous Indian effort failed in 2019, and the latest mission comes just days after Russia's first Moon mission in almost 50 years, destined for the same region, crashed on the lunar surface.

But former Indian space chief K. Sivan said the latest photos transmitted back home by the lander gave every indication that the final leg of the voyage would succeed.

"It is giving some encouragement that we will be able to achieve the landing mission without any problem," he told AFP on Monday.

Sivan added that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had made corrections after the failure of four years ago, when scientists lost contact with the previous lunar module moments before its slated landing.

"Chandrayaan-3 is going to go with more ruggedness," he said. "We have confidence, and we expect that everything will go smoothly."

The mission launched nearly six weeks ago in front of thousands of cheering spectators, but took much longer to reach the Moon than those of the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days.

India is using rockets much less powerful than those the United States used back then, and instead the probe orbited Earth several times to gain speed before embarking on its month-long lunar trajectory.

- 'Smooth sailing is continuing' -

The spacecraft's lander Vikram, which means "valour" in Sanskrit, detached from its propulsion module last week and has been sending back images of the moon's surface since entering lunar orbit on August 5.

A day ahead of the landing, the ISRO said on social media the landing was proceeding on schedule and that its mission control complex was "buzzed with energy & excitement".

"Smooth sailing is continuing," the agency posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

India has a comparatively low-budget aerospace programme, but one that has grown considerably in size and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the Moon in 2008.

The latest mission comes with a price tag of $74.6 million -- far lower than those of other countries, and a testament to India's frugal space engineering.

Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing space technology, and thanks to an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts' wages.

In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to put a satellite into orbit around Mars and is slated to launch a three-day manned mission into Earth's orbit by next year.

- 'Very, very important' -

Sivan, the former ISRO chief, said India's efforts to explore the relatively unmapped lunar south pole would make a "very, very important" contribution to scientific knowledge.

Only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved a controlled landing on the lunar surface.

Russia launched its own lunar probe earlier in August -- its first in nearly half a century.

If successful it would have beaten Chandrayaan-3 by a matter of days to become the first mission of any nation to make a controlled landing around the lunar south pole.

But the Luna-25 probe crash-landed on Saturday after an unspecified incident as it was preparing for descent.

Punishing sanctions since the outset of the Ukraine war have affected Russia's space industry, which has also been beleaguered by corruption and a lack of innovation and partnerships.

ash/gle/sco

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