ISRO delayed launch of Chandrayaan-3 by few seconds for this reason

The liftoff of India's historic Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander was shifted four seconds in an effort to avoid close approaches to other space objects, Space News reported.

Chandrayaan-3 launched on July 14 on a LVM-3 heavy-lift rocket from Satish Dhawan Space Centre into an initial highly-elliptical Earth orbit.

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"Based on collision avoidance analysis the liftoff time was shifted by four seconds so that there was no collision threat," Anil Kumar, chief general manager of safe and sustainable space operations management at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), was quoted as saying at the 74th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Azerbaijan's capital Baku on October 6.

"This is a mandatory practice, not only for ISRO but for all space launch vehicles. That is, before launch, the liftoff should be cleared," Kumar said.

Also watch |Chandrayaan-3: What are ISRO's plans to bring Moon samples to Earth?

"The number of space objects in orbit, especially low Earth orbit, is so high. The US Space Force is tracking and cataloging more than 30,000 objects with a size of more than 10 centimeters."

"For this LVM-3 launch on that particular day… when we analysed, we found that during the first orbital phase of Chandrayaan-3 many objects, including operational objects, were coming closer than one kilometer."

The Vikram lander of India's Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission achieved a safe soft-landing on the south pole of the Moon on Wednesday (Aug 23) evening at its scheduled time of 6:04 PM (Indian Standard Time). The Chandrayaan-3 space mission's historic success has made India the first country in the world to land a spacecraft on Moon's south pole, and fourth country to land on Moon overall.

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