Chandrayaan-3: Vikram lander 25km above moon, to land at break of Lunar Day on Aug 23

After a 37-day journey, the Chandrayaan-3 lander craft 'Vikram' is now barely 25 kilometres above the Lunar surface. This is the lowest orbit it will remain in before it commences its powered descent (manoeuvres that will lead to the Lunar soft landing). "The powered descent is expected to commence on August 23rd, 2023, around 5:45 pm IST," ISRO said. This indicates that the Lunar soft-landing could be completed by 6:15 pm on Wednesday.

The lander craft performed its second and final de-boost manoeuvre at 2 am IST, Sunday,August 20. This brought the lander craft from an orbit of 113kmsx157kms to an orbit of 25kmsx134kms. This means the craft is barely 25 km above the lunar surface, at its closest approach and 134 km above the lunar surface at its farthest approach.

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Chandrayaan-3 has a specific landing date of August 23, as the day marks the commencement of the Lunar daytime. Landing during the Lunar Day would help the Indian craft charge its batteries by harnessing solar power.

Given that Chandrayaan-3 (lander-rover) has a mission life of only one Lunar day (14.75 Earth days), it is imperative for the craft to begin its operations immediately once the lunar daybreaks. This would give it the maximum possible operational time to carry out in-situ experiments, as planned.

Meanwhile, as it performed a similar manoeuvre to move into a pre-landing orbit, Russia's Luna-25 craft raninto trouble and crashed into the moon and the mission has reportedly failed. Chandrayaan's Vikram is meant to land near 70 degree latitude of the moon, which is near the unexplored southern polar region.

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"Today, in accordance with the Luna-25 flight programme, at 14:10, an impulse was issued to transfer the station (craft) to the pre-landing orbit. During the operation, an emergency situation occurred on board the automatic station(robotic craft) which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters The management team is currently analyzing the situation" read the translated version of the Roscosmos statement released after the glitch was reported.

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While India has undertaken Lunar missions in 2008, 2019 and now Chandrayaan-3, the erstwhile Soviet Union had performed its last Lunar lander mission in 1976. Luna-25 got delayed by more than a decade and was the maiden Lunar mission of Russia.

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