This coming Friday will be an important day for India as it will launch its third mission to the moon. The mission will take off at 14:35 IST. Its goal is to achieve what the previous mission could not achieve, i.e. the goal of a gentle landing on the Moon.
A successful moon landing would make the country the fourth country in the world to land smoothly on the lunar surface, after the United States, Russia and China.
Mission to the Moon
First, the spacecraft will be launched into orbit around the Earth at an altitude of exactly 179 km. The spacecraft will slowly increase its orbit in a series of maneuvers to overcome Earth’s gravity and toward the Moon’s surface. when this happens, a second series of maneuvers will reduce the spacecraft’s orbit to a circular orbit of 100 x 100 km. The lander holding the rover inside will detach from the propulsion module and begin the engine descent.
How is it different from the previous mission?
S Somnath, president of ISRO, recently stated that the new mission changes are essentially “failure-based”. He declared, “Instead of designing based on success in Chandrayaan-2, we are designing on failure in Chandrayaan-3 — looking at what could go wrong and how to fix it.”
At the time of Chandrayaan-2, the rover and lander collided on the lunar surface, instead of making a gentle landing. The president explained that the main problem behind such a landing was that the five engines on the lander produced a little more thrust than expected. To determine the landing site, the lander must click on the image while remaining steady during this phase. That’s when the mistake happens.
However, the current mission is designed after considering all these mistakes.
The first noticeable change is that the landing area has been expanded. Instead of trying to approach a certain 500mx500m area for landing purposes as the previous Chandrayaan-2 did, the current mission was instructed to land safely anywhere within the 4kmx2.4km area.
Another aspect to focus on is the landing page. Chandrayaan 2 landed on the near side of the Moon, while Chandrayaan 3 was created with the goal of landing on the South Pole of the Moon. Antarctica is a very important area for lunar exploration, as it is believed to be rich in water ice.
Ultimately, Chandrayaan 3 will be a more autonomous mission than Chandrayaan 2. The Chandrayaan 3 lander and rover will be able to operate more independently, as there will be no human intervention after landing on the Chandrayaan 3. Moon.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn