https://www.isro.gov.in/gslv-mk-iii-m1-chandrayaan-2-mission/chandrayaan-2-mission-gallery
KEY POINTS
- Chandrayaan-3 successfully entered the lunar orbit on Aug. 5, weeks after its July 14 liftoff
- A video of the moon taken from the Chandrayaan-3 was shared on social media during LOI
- The spacecraft is gearing up for a soft landing on Aug. 23, India’s space agency said
India’s space agency has shared glimpses of the moon from the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which successfully entered the moon’s orbit over the weekend and is preparing to land on the moon’s surface in a few days.
Chandrayaan-3, the latest space mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), successfully entered the lunar orbit on Aug. 5 after its liftoff from an island off the coast of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on July 14.
“This is the third time in succession that ISRO has successfully inserted its spacecraft into the lunar orbit, apart from doing so into the Martian orbit,” the space agency noted in a statement.
A video of the moon taken from the Chandrayaan-3 was shared on social media during the Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI).
“The health of Chandrayaan-3 is normal. Throughout the mission, the health of the spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) antenna at Byalalu, near Bengaluru, with the support from ESA and JPL Deep space antenna,” the statement said.
Chandrayaan-3 is gearing up for a soft landing on Aug. 23, ISRO’s statement added.
A soft landing is only successful when the spacecraft remains intact while landing on the lunar surface without crashing intentionally or unintentionally.
If the Chandrayaan-3 sees a successful soft landing, India will become the fourth country in the world to successfully achieve the feat after the former Soviet Union, the U.S. and China. It would also rewrite India’s failed Chandrayaan-2 mission, which was launched in 2019 and crashed into the lunar surface.
Chandrayaan-3 will attempt to land at the little-explored lunar south pole and make cosmic history, as no other nation has landed near the moon’s south polar region.
The rest of the mission includes deploying a rover named Pragyan, which has a mission life of 14 earth days or one lunar day to explore the lunar south pole and gather images for further analysis.
“India will have the distinction of being a member of one of four elite members who actually landed anything on the Moon,” astrophysicist Sandip K. Chakrabarti told International Business Times last month ahead of Chandrayaan-3’s launch.
“After the failure of the lander on Chandrayaan-2, ISRO has been working incessantly to rectify problems in lander, even during the hard times of COVID era which affected the overall progress,” Chakrabarti said, before congratulating ISRO for being able to “come up with a completely new version of lander with many improvements.”
