India will become the fourth country to successfully land on the moon with an intact spacecraft if the Chandrayaan 3 mission successfully lands near the moon’s south pole today. It will also be the first country to explore the polar regions, where water is potentially abundant.
of Indian Space Research OrganizationChandrayaan 3, which means “moon ship” in Sanskrit, took off on July 14 from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh aboard the launch vehicle Mark-III, and has sailed about 380,000 people over the course of six weeks. A few kilometers to the moon.
The mission is currently preparing to land the Vikram lander in lunar orbit at a location with water resources that could help realize a permanent lunar base.
The previous Chandrayaan-2 mission failed in 2019 when a software glitch caused the Vikram lander to crash into the moon. It was destroyed along with a six-wheeled rover named Pragyan, which was to explore the lunar south pole.
An early Chandrayaan-1 mission consisted of a lunar orbiter and a probe designed to intentionally crash into the moon at high speed, again targeting Antarctica. India’s latest mission aims to make a soft landing to conduct scientific research.
Chandrayaan 3 is a repeat of the Chandrayaan 2 mission, but this time without an orbiter. Instead, the Vikram lander and rover It independently handles communications with Earth without the need for intermediate satellites. Officials said the landing is expected to take place around 6:00 p.m. India time (12:30 p.m. Japan time). Once released, the rover is expected to survive only two weeks in the harsh lunar environment.
To date, only the United States, the Soviet Union, and China have successfully landed on the moon unscathed. In April, a Japanese start-up company tried it privately, but it also crashed into the ground at a tremendous speed and ended in failure. Russia’s latest attempt at lunar exploration—the first in nearly half a century—also ended in disaster earlier this week. The Luna 25 lander was supposed to land peacefully, but it appeared to have slammed into the ground at such a high speed that it was supposed to fire the engines for a short period of time to change position, and lasted too long before it ‘disappeared’, Russia said. released by the space agency. Published by Roscosmos.
Isro said in a tweet Prior to landing, controllers reported that they were “boiling with energy and excitement” and that the mission was proceeding as planned.
“The lunar south pole is thought to be rich in water ice, which could be used to fuel spacecraft and produce other resources such as metals and minerals.” Sri Charan Padara He works for GlobalData, an analytics and consulting firm. “The successful landing of Chandrayaan 3 at the South Pole will give India a head start in developing the infrastructure and technology needed to extract these resources.”
topic:
- moon/
- space exploration
