2023-07-14 11:46:26
The Space Research Organization of the India (ISRO) launched this Friday its ambitious mission to explore the south pole of the MoonChandrayaan-3, a probe that is expected to land on the satellite between August 23 and 24, after the failed moon landing four years ago.
The Chandrayaan-3 launch with the rocket Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM3) took place at 2:35 p.m. (9:05 a.m. GMT) on Friday from the center of Sriharikota in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, as scheduled, the ISRO showed live during the countdown.
The rocket will orbit the Earth before starting the flight path. 384,400 kilometers to the Moonwhere it will enter orbit before carrying out the landing maneuver around August 23, the head of ISRO, Sreedhara Panicker Somanath, explained yesterday.
The mass of the mission is 3,900 kilograms, and it will have the capacity to operate during one lunar day, equivalent to fourteen days on Earth.
an unexplored zone
The aim of the Indian organization is to reach the unexplored south pole of the Moonlanding a probe on the surface with which to carry out scientific experiments and collect data on the mineral composition of the satellite and the presence of water.
If India meets its goal, and the probe manages to land intact on the rugged surface of the lunar south pole, it will become the fourth country to succeed in a mission of this typea feat achieved so far only by Russia, the United States and China.
All previous missions, however, have focused on the southern regions of the satellite and Chandrayaan-3 would be the first to land on the south pole.
Third mission to the moon of the country
It’s about the India’s third lunar exploration mission, after the Asian nation launched its first space mission to the Moon in 2008, Chandrayaan-1. Consisting of an orbiter that circled the satellite more than 3,400 times without landing between November 2008 and August 2009.
The probe discovered direct evidence of water on the Moonand an analysis of measurements taken by Chandrayaan-1 with a NASA measurement instrument confirmed in 2018 multiple ice reserves in the permanently shadowed areas of the satellite, according to the US agency.
ISRO already tried in 2019 to land a probe on the south pole of the Moon with its second mission, Chandrayaan-2, but the mission failed when it crashed due to technical problems in the reduction of speed when landing.
To improve upon its predecessor, the new probe has reinforced the legs of the lunar landing moduleand has improved the software to have more tolerance for possible technical errors such as the one that could cause the failed moon landing in 2019.
The achievements of the Indian space program are accentuated if one takes into account that the Indian Department of Space (DoS), responsible for ISRO, has a budget this year of about 1.5 billion dollars compared to 26 billion for NASA, limited resources have not prevented the Indian organization from earning a favorable reputation.
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