BENGALURU: Four years later success far exceeds India and isro, they are on track to make history again by landing a probe in the polar regions of the lunar surface. If all goes well, VikramThe Chandrayaan 3 lander will land at 6:04 pm with Pragyan (the self-propelled man) in his belly.
Vikram is also better prepared to take on the challenge of landing this time. Among other things – TOI has detailed these before – it will be able to withstand landings at greater velocities (3 m/s) than before. Isro also made a number of other changes drawn from the failure of Chandrayaan-2.
“The mission is on schedule. The systems are being tested regularly. Smooth sailing continues. The Mission Operations Complex (MOX) is full of energy and excitement!,” Isro said Tuesday, alleviating fears of a “Plan B” at this stage. It also released images taken by the Lander Imager Camera-4 (LPDC) from an altitude of about 70km, taken on August 19, and those taken by Lander Imager Camera-4 on August 20. “The LPDC images assist the lander module in determining its position (latitude and longitude) by matching them to the onboard lunar reference map,” added Isro.
Landing & first trip to the poles
Isro President S Somanath told TOI: “The overall process can take about 30 minutes or so.” For the final more than 15 minutes, described as “15 minutes of horror” in Chandrayaan-2, Somanath said: “The exact timeline will depend on the mission: where the module landed, its systems. how it works, the environment there, does it need to continue with the first location shown, or choose a different one based on hazard detection… There are a lot of variables, so we don’t want to enter the exact number of minutes.”
If Vikram succeeds, India will become the fourth country to soft land on the Moon and the first to do so in the poles due to Russia’s Luna-25 crashing uncontrollably just days before landing. according to the plan.
Pragyan will then emerge from Vikram and touch the lunar surface with a ramp before beginning its exploration. Both the lander and rover are designed to operate for one lunar day (14 Earths).
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Landing Science & Challenges
As important as this landing is, Isro is equally focused on the science that the tools it has packed aboard the lander and rover will do. As one senior Isro scientist put it: “Our work ends only after Vikram and Pragyan complete the lunar day (14 Earth days) and landing is the first step to ensuring that. “.
Top missions completed by ISRO before Chadrayaan-3
Upon landing, Vikram will also need to deal with some challenges – such as lunar dust. Burning the engines on ships close to the surface leads to a backflow of hot air and dust. Moon dust is very small and hard. Its negative charge causes it to stick to surfaces, causing disruptions in deployment mechanism, solar panel performance, etc.
For Vikram to perform experiments, even bring out Pragyan, it is important to manage lunar dust and stay healthy. Once this is done, the Moon’s extreme heat and vacuum will emerge – a 14-day lunar day or night on Earth. This results in extreme surface temperature variations while the pressure around the surface is a hard vacuum making it a hostile environment for landers and rovers.
ISRO Moon Mission: Chandrayaan-3 Rover Leaves India’s Mark on Moon’s Surface
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