ISRO’s Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM3) M4 rocket carrying ‘Chandrayaan-3’ lifts off from the launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, in Sriharikota, on July 14, 2023.
| Photo Credit: PTI
India’s third moon mission, Chandrayaan-3 has been successfully launched as the Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3) with the satellite onboard took off from the second launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 2.35 pm on July 14.
This is India’s attempt to do a soft landing on the lunar surface for the second time having failed in 2019 with the Chandrayaan-2 mission.
Also read: Chandrayaan-3 launch LIVE news
So far only three countries, the U.S., Russia and China have successfully soft-landed on the Moon.
At approximately 16.157 minutes after the LVM-3 lifted off from the launch pad, the satellite separation took place, the integrated module (comprising a propulsion module, lander module and rover) was placed a in an Elliptic Parking Orbit (EPO) of size ~170 x 36500 km.
The Chandrayaan-3 consists of an indigenous propulsion module (PM), lander module (LM) and a rover with an objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for inter-planetary missions.
The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover from injection orbit to till 100 km lunar orbit. It also carries a Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planetary Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and polarimetric measurements of earth from the lunar orbit.
According to ISRO, the lander has the capability to soft land at a specified lunar site, and deploy the rover, which will carry out in-situ chemical analysis of the lunar surface during the course of its mobility. The Lander and the Rover have scientific payloads to carry out experiments on the lunar surface.
Following a series of manoeuvres over the next one month which include Earth bound manoeuvres, lunar orbit insertion, moon bound manoeuvres, PM and Lunar Module separation and a few others, the Lander will make a soft landing on the Moon on August 23 or 24.