It’s the big day for the Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, which will go all out! It will start its last braking at the beginning of the afternoon to try to land on the lunar surface at 2:34 p.m. (Paris). A great moment of tension that the Indian space agency, ISRO, shares with the whole world.
The live will be available on Youtube here
The hardest adventure
Chandrayaan-3 is ready for its final and toughest test. The Indian lander, designed to succeed after India’s bitter failure in September 2019, will turn on its main engine to brake at 2:15 p.m. this Wednesday, August 23. So far, the mission has gone off without a hitch, with an impeccable takeoff to enter an elliptical orbit around the Earth, then successive and precise accelerations which allowed it to enter lunar orbit on August 6… before a series of maneuvers to adjust its orbit above the surface. A few days before its last braking, it was already regularly passing over its future landing zone, near the lunar South Pole, but until the beginning of the week, it was in shadow.
It will take 19 minutes if all goes well for the Chandrayaan-3 mission (the lander itself is called Vikram) to go from orbit to immobility on the surface of the Moon, at 2:34 p.m. (Paris) …And in the event of a last-minute problem before the engine ignition, the Indian space agency has the option of delaying the landing and aiming for a second date on August 27.
An Indian craze
The Chandrayaan-3 mission is particularly followed at the end of the summer in India, in what could be called a kind of national momentum towards the space sector. The Indian agency, ISRO, has planned a live event, and the event will be covered on national television channels, but this enthusiasm is not limited to landing. The meticulous communication (regular tweets, relaxed and no longer purely technical language) and the palpable excitement of the ISRO staff is contagious and finds many echoes in the most populous country in the world: the agency’s engineers and researchers have succeeded the microphones in recent hours. It must be said that the tension is at its height with a very complex maneuver, a failed mission four years ago, and the crash three days ago of the Russian Luna-25 mission…
Pragyan in stride
If all goes as planned in the afternoon, Vikram will be operational for two weeks (one lunar day) on the surface of the Moon. He won’t waste any time and will immediately bring down the little Pragyan rover that he is protecting in his interior compartment. The latter, in addition to analyzing the ground, should send back new images of this exciting adventure. But first, you have to ask yourself.
Source : Hindustantimes.com
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