Chandrayaan-3 | India’s third lunar odyssey begins with perfect launch

Source: The post is based on the article “Chandrayaan-3 | India’s third lunar odyssey begins with perfect launch” published in The Hindu on 15th July 2023

What is the News?

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch the highly anticipated Chandrayaan-3 mission to the moon from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

What is Chandrayaan-3?

Source: Indian Express

Chandrayaan-3 is India’s third lunar mission.

It is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.

Objectives: 1) To demonstrate Safe and Soft Landing on Lunar Surface 2) To demonstrate Rover roving on the moon and 3) To conduct in-situ scientific experiments.

Modules: The spacecraft consists of two parts — the propulsion and the Lander-rover modules.

– The propulsion module’s main job is to take the lander-rover payloads to the moon. You can think of the propulsion module as a truck and the lander-rover payload as the cargo.

– After reaching the vicinity of the moon, the lander-rover payload will detach itself from the propulsion module and fall on to the moon. 

– The lander has engines that will slow down the fall, so that it descends gently onto the moon rather than crash-landing on it.

– The rover is a tiny, trolley kind of device with wheels. Once the lander lands on the moon, the rover will slide out of the lander’s belly and crawl over the moon’s surface.

– Both the lander and the rover have instruments for experiments, such as analyzing the moon soil, checking how the moon’s surface conducts heat, and how quake waves move through the moon surface.

Lander payloads: 1) Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) to measure the thermal conductivity and temperature 2) Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) for measuring the seismicity around the landing site 3) Langmuir Probe (LP) to estimate the plasma density and its variations and 4) passive Laser Retroreflector Array from NASA is accommodated for lunar laser ranging studies.

Rover payloads: 1) Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and 2) Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) for deriving the elemental composition in the vicinity of the landing site.

Significance: A successful soft landing will make India the fourth country, after the United States, Russia, and China, to achieve the feat.