The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Friday launched the second attempt for India to land on the Moon, aiming to become the fourth country to achieve the feat. This unmanned spacecraft attempts to land on the surface of the Moon, its second attempt to become only the fourth country to do so.
Humans landed on the Moon almost fifty years ago, however, to date, this remains an extremely difficult task to achieve. On 21 July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon. He was joined by Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin 19 minutes later.
Failed moon missions
ISRO has last attempted to send an unmanned spacecraft to the lunar surface in 2019, the Chandrayaan-2. The mission failed in September 2019 when the Vikram lander crashed into the Moon’s surface.
Notably, there were other failed missions to moon from other countries in the same year. The Israel-led Beresheet mission failed in early 2019.
Further in 2023 April, the Japanese Hakuto-R mission also failed to complete a soft landing on the Moon .
These are only a few examples of the several missions that failed to land on Moon.
In the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union crashed spacecraft after spacecraft till they finally succeeded landing one.
China is the only other country that completed a soft landing on the Moon and it did that on its first try with the Chang’e-5 mission in 2013.
Reaching for the Moon
Reaching the Moon comes much later in a Mission to Moon. Long before a spacecraft reaches Earth’s only natural satellite, it needs to figure out how to safely make the 3,84,400 kilometres journey. That is a long long road to carefully avert failure.
To be far more specific, making the journey out of earth’s Orbit and entering the Moon’s Orbit even before landing on the lunar surface is a task in itself. NASA has earlier dumped a moon mission because a failure in the spacecraft’s propulsion system meant that it could not enter the lunar orbit.
Soft landing on Moon
ISRO Chief called the 15 minute-duration of the soft-landing on Moon “15 minutes of terror” when the lander has to fire its engines at the right times and right altitudes, use just the right amount of fuel, make accurate scans of the lunar surface’s hills and craters and finally touch down.
The whole process is autonomous, meaning the ISRO cannot do much to guide the lander from Earth.
Earth’s atmosphere is thick enough for a spacecraft to slow down for landing due to friction. However, Moon does not provide a similar atmosphere wherein, if not slowed down, the spacecraft might crash.
Soft-landing a lunar module means going from the roaring speeds of over 6,000 km/h to zero.
Lunar Dust
Even after the spacecraft has achieved the difficult task of soft landing, there is the issue of lunar dust. When touching down, the lander’s thrusters blast lunar dust off the surface at high speeds. This can obscure the camera lens and trigger faulty readings.
Like Apollo 15, all other Apollo missions faced problems due to dust. Besides dust getting into the astronauts’ space suits and degrading suit pressure, it also caused devices to malfunction.
No GPS on Moon
The moon does not have a digital map to make a precise landing. This means that onboard computers will have to make quick calculations and decisions to land itself precisely on the Moon.
At this point the onboard computers are the only look out wherein these devices have to autonomously react quickly to last-minute issues.
To add cherry to the cake, the fact that the Moon has an uneven surface littered with craters and boulders, landing on either could prove tragic for the mission.
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Updated: 14 Jul 2023, 04:13 PM IST