ISRO chairman S Somanath shared the critical elements in the spacecraft's nearly 4000,000km journey to the Moon.
ISRO Chairman S Somanath on Wednesday toasted the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, crediting it to the 'pain and agony' of all the scientists who persevered on it, and expressed confidence that the space agency would similarly land a spacecraft on Mars in the coming years.
While addressing the media, a jubilant ISRO Chairman S Somanath shared about the most critical elements in Chandrayaan 3's journey.
He said, "The most difficult part of the mission is the launch itself... You should not forget that the GSLV Mark 3 (the rocket that launched the Chandrayaan-3 module that contains the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover) did the job of putting the spacecraft into the right orbit."
"It went to 36,500 km and up to trans-lunar injection (which is a propulsive move used to set a spacecraft on a trajectory to the Moon) phase it went very well," Mr Somnath said.
India's Moon mission Chandrayaan-3 touched down on the lunar south pole at 6.04 pm on Wednesday, making it the first country to land on the uncharted surface. Chandrayaan 3 module seperated from the rocket 16 minutes after launch and orbited the Earth six times, reaching a maximum distance of 36500 km before the first orbit-raising move on July 15, taking it to a distance of 41,672 km
"The second critical event is called 'landing and capturing on the Moon'. If you miss it then it (the possibility of landing on the lunar surface) is gone. You cannot retrieve it and there is no mission," the top scientist explained.
'Capturing the Moon' refers to the critical moments when Chandrayaan-3 must identify a landing site - in which it is aided by a slew of high-powered cameras developed inhouse by ISRO - while it deboosts from lunar orbit and prepares for descent.
Making errors now would be terrible since the Vikram lander might crash when it tries to touch down.
"Third critical moment is separation of lander and orbiter, which happened at the appropriate time. Again, you must remember that this was after spending many days in space, in orbit, and the mechanism had to work without problems, which it did."
The Vikram lander and the 26 kg rover (Pragyan) separated from the propulsion module on Thursday, August 17.
A smiling ISRO chief then said, "The last critical moment, of course, you watched along with us", referring to the tense moments leading up to Chandrayaan-3's Moon soft landing.
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