chennai, Aug 1 Heralding a major milestone in India’s
third moon mission, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft moved out
of the earth orbits and was successfully signed into the Lunar
Orbit on Monday midnight and is heading towards the moon.
With this challenging accomplishment, the spacecraft, has moved
yet another step closer in the mission ahead of soft landing on the
Lunar surface that will happen in the third week of August.
In a tweet, ISRO said “Chandrayaan-3 completes its orbits around
the Earth and heads towards the Moon.”
“A successful perigee-firing performed at ISTRAC, ISRO has injected
the spacecraft into the translunar orbit”, it said.
“Next stop: the Moon–As it arrives at the moon, the Lunar-Orbit
Insertion (LOI) is planned for Aug 5, 2023″, ISRO said.
“The coming 23 days are very crucial and the ISRO scientists
will be monitoring the spacecraft round the clock from the
ground stations”, ISRO sources said after the successful
entry of Chandrayaan-3 into the Lunar phase”, ISRO sources.
ISRO sources said the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was successfully
injected into the TransLunar Injection (TLI) orbit by firing the
onboard thruster motors from the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and
Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru.
Having entered the Lunar orbit, the spacecraft’s orbit will be
further manuevred for the soft landing on August 23 evening to
explore the hitherto unexplored south pole region of the moon.
The success of the soft landing would propel India to join a
select group of space faring nations to achieve this historic
milestone. Only US, the then Soviet Union and China have
achieved this feat so far.
India too nearly achieved it in its maiden attempt when it
launched Chandrayaan-2 in July 2019, before the lander
crash landed very close to the landing spot, making the
mission about 99.99 per cent success.
