ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 soft landed on less explored south pole of the lunar surface and created history. This achievement made India the first country to reach near the Moon’s South Pole. After the soft landing India ranks amongst the top four nations to carry out a soft landing on the Moon. After launching into Earth’s orbit, the spacecraft will gradually increase its orbit through a series of maneuvers to escape Earth’s gravity and slingshot toward the moon.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 successfully lands on the Moon

Along with the Indian flag depicted on the Moon Impact Probe, carried by the spacecraft, he made a suggestion – to name the impact site after Nehru. It was on his birthday the landing was made, and he had long championed undertaking scientific developments and research in India. “In general, there has been a tradition across the world with such kinds of successful missions, to give a name to that point,” Modi said. He added that there was a discussion over naming the spot where Chandrayaan-2 crashed in 2019 as well, but they believed that should happen only once the next mission succeeds in soft-landing.

Several Moon-bound manoeuvres were required to decrease the eccentricity of the lunar orbit, which were the product of several retrograde (opposing direction of motion) burns performed at perilune (closest point to the Moon). These manoeuvres have the opposite effect to the Earth-bound manoeuvres, as its orbit circularises anonymous from a decreased velocity. LVM3 is ISRO’s largest and heaviest operational launch vehicle, with a successful flight heritage marking its fourth operational flight with Chandrayaan-3.

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• This award is renowned for applauding extraordinary accomplishments in the aerospace field, and Isro’s groundbreaking work on Chandrayaan-3 certainly made its mark this year.

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• While the US and Soviet Union sent countless missions until they made a successful soft landing, China holds the distinction of being the only nation to succeed in its maiden mission.
• The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft consisted of a Propulsion Module (PM) coupled with a Lander Module (LM), the latter which houses a lunar rover that aimed to develop and demonstrate novel technologies for interplanetary missions.

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• Chandrayaan-3 is a lunar exploration mission by the Indian Spacе Rеsеarch Organisation (ISRO).

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• However, due to the Moon’s ultra-high vacuum environment, ice would sublimate directly into vapor rather than melting into liquid water.

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• This type of back-up support is common during key moments of a space mission such as a landing.

Tracking from these two stations was supported by NASA’s and ISRO’s respective DSNs, to ensure Chandrayaan-3 was never out of sight throughout the entirety of the mission’s duration. Regardless, the Chandrayaan-3 mission is deemed a complete success as its mission objectives have been met. The PM then performs a series of burns to reduce Chandrayaan-3’s orbit, bringing itself closer to the lunar surface ready to detach from the LM. The Pragyan Rover was a new iteration of the Rover onboard Chandrayaan-2; a six-wheeled solar-powered vehicle that deployed from the LM. Differential steering controlled the Rover’s motion, with each wheel driven by independent brushless electric motors, cushioned by a rocker-bogie suspension system.

Despite successful missions like Chandrayaan-3 India’s share in the total global space economy is just around 2%. India needs to adopt a multipronged approach to become a space superpower in ‘Amrit Kaal’. Expansion of cooperation in outer space- While geo-political rivalry is a reality, India’s success in space missions like Chandrayaan-3 provides India an opportunity to limit competition and expand cooperation in outer space. India can also gain military advantage in space over their geopolitical rivals on Earth. Boost to India’s push for “Space Industrialization”- The success of Chandrayaan-3 provides an opportunity for India to push for Space Industrialization.India can extract extra-terrestrial mineral resources and embark on deep space exploration. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the point where the Vikram lander touched down on the lunar surface would be named “Shiv Shakti” and the crash site of the failed Chandrayaan-2 mission in 2019 as “Tiranga point”.

“The IAU has been the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919,” its website states. According to Alexander Soucek, head of public international law at the European Space Agency, “A nation can plant a flag on the moon, but it doesn’t have any legal meaning or consequence. This is entrained in the Outer Space Treaty, where it’s written that no country can claim sovereignty on the moon or make it its own territory,” reported DW. According to IAU, when the first images of a planet’s surface or a satellite are received, the themes for naming features are chosen and members of the appropriate IAU task group propose names of some prominent features. When images of higher resolution and maps are obtained, the investigators mapping or describing specific surfaces or geological formations may request names for some additional features.

Chandrayaan 3: Mission Overview, Objectives, Goals, Lunar South Pole Landing & Duration

On August 23, 2023, the Chandrayaan-3 mission created history with the successful soft landing on Moon’s surface. Ground stations on Earth keep operators connected to spacecraft as they venture into the unknown. Without ground station support, it’s impossible to get any data from a spacecraft, to know how it’s doing, to know if it is safe or even to know where it is.

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Rover pragyan

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The mission, which successfully landed near the Moon’s South Pole on August 23, 2023, has provided crucial temperature data that indicate ice could exist in more locations beneath the lunar surface, particularly at the poles. ISRO also released data from the observations made by ChaSTE (Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment), one of the four instruments present on the lander module. ChaSTE was designed to study the heat conductivity of the Moon’s surface and measure the differences in temperatures at different points on and below the surface, with the overall objective of creating a thermal profile of the Moon. When Chandrayaan-3 took off for the Moon on July 14, we explained the basics of the mission – how a mission launches into Space, what the Chandrayaan-1 and Chandrayaan-2 missions were, etc.

Here, we further explain why a ‘soft landing’ was crucial to the mission, what makes landing on the south pole a difficult feat, and what is to happen after the landing. The primary function of the PM was to carry the LM from a launch vehicle injection orbit down to a low altitude before separation. PM was based on the ISRO I-3K (INSAT 3000) platform, which is also shared by ISRO’s INSAT-3A (Indian National Satellite) as well as NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) missions. Demonstration of India’s space technology prowess- Demonstration of India’s capability in end to end soft landing and roving on the lunar surface. The main function of Propulsion Module (PM) is to carry the lander Module (LM) from launch vehicle injection till final lunar 100 km circular polar orbit, where the LM separates from PM. The Moon does not come under the jurisdiction of any one country – it’s what makes global exploration and landing missions possible.