Chandrayaan-3 successfully inserted into Moon’s orbit, under lunar gravity now: ISRO

India’s third moon mission’s spacecraft, Chandrayaan-3, is one step closer to a lunar landing after the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), announced that it has successfully entered the moon’s orbit, on Saturday (August 5).

ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 mission update

The announcement was made by the Indian space agency on X, formerly known as Twitter where it wrote: “‘MOX, ISTRAC, this is Chandrayaan-3. I am feeling lunar gravity’. Chandrayaan-3 has been successfully inserted into the lunar orbit.”

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It added, “A retro-burning at the Perilune was commanded from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX), ISTRAC, Bengaluru. The next operation - reduction of orbit – is scheduled for Aug 6, 2023, around 23:00 Hrs. IST.”

The step marks the completion of a critical manoeuvre Lunar Orbit Injection (LOI), with this, Chandrayaan 3 has been successfully inserted into a lunar orbit. The next lunar bound orbit manoeuvre is scheduled for tomorrow (August 6) around 11:00 pm (local time), said ISRO.

The health of spacecraft is constantly being monitored by the MOX, at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in the Indian city of Bengaluru. ISRO reported that all systems are healthy.

Lunar Orbit Injection (LOI)

In the late hours of July 31, the craft performed Trans-Lunar injection (TLI), a long-duration firing of its engines and began a journey that pushed it out of Earth’s gravitational influence and towards Lunar gravitational influence.

Speaking to WION about the Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI), Dr Mylswamy Annadurai (Retd), Former Director of India’s UR Rao Satellite Centre, said “During the Lunar orbit insertion, the craft will reach the vicinity of the moon and within the Lunar gravitational influence. Thereafter, it would fire its onboard engines to slow itself down and get captured into Lunar orbit. Then, it would begin to circle the moon in a highly-elliptical orbit.”

During the first weeks of August, the spacecraft is set to complete five to six orbits around the moon before a precise landing site on the moon’s south pole area is determined.

In this crucial operation, the spacecraft’s velocity was reduced, allowing the Moon’s gravitational field to capture it into a stable lunar orbit. The spacecraft is now expected to revolve around the Moon in an elliptical orbit, with further manoeuvres planned to gradually decrease its altitude in the following days.

About the Chandrayaan-3 mission

Chandrayaan-3 is expected to make a soft landing near the Lunar south pole at around 70 degrees latitude. Performing a successful Lunar soft landing would make India the fourth nation to do so, after Russia, the United States and China.

ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 is meant to land a few hundred kilometres away from the Moon’s south pole – a region that has also largely remained unexplored, owing to the near-nil sunlight illumination there. However, it is believed that many mysteries of the Moon could be unravelled by performing in-situ probing of this region.

Launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on 14 July, 2023, aboard the LVM-3 rocket, Chandrayaan-3 has covered over three lakh kilometres between Earth and Moon. It had completed its orbits around the Earth on August 1 when it embarked on its trans-lunar journey.

ISRO scientists now have to demonstrate the capability for a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, following the challenges faced during the Chandrayaan-2 mission in 2019.

(With inputs from agencies)

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