2023-08-23 14:59:30
India did it. The young space nation has succeeded in what only the USA, the former Soviet Union and China have managed to do so far: the successful landing on the moon. The unmanned landing module of the Chandrayaan-3 space probe touched down safely on the south pole of the moon at 2:33 p.m. German time. No sooner had the 1.7-ton spacecraft landed than the scientists and the many observers in the control center of the Indian space agency ISRO in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru, who followed the landing approach live on a large monitor, cheered.
A built-in camera meanwhile provided images from the surface to the earth. “India is now on the moon,” exclaimed Indian President Narendra Modi, who was connected from South Africa at the BRICS meeting. Waving a small Indian flag, he wanted to address the joyful occasion to all people worldwide. “The success of the moon mission belonged to all of humanity,” Modi said.
For India, the Chandrayaan-3 moon mission is a prestige project, especially since the lander landed in a region of the moon that has so far been little studied. The terrain is to be explored for fourteen days, including by a small rover that is being carried along. One of the items on the agenda is the search for frozen water. The sun does not rise very high above the horizon near the lunar poles, so deep crater floors are never illuminated, which is why water ice may have persisted there. The main purpose of the mission is to demonstrate the particularly difficult soft landing of a space probe in this lunar region and thus pave the way for further lunar projects.
India originally wanted to land on the moon four years ago, but during the final phase of the landing approach, contact with the landing module of the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft broke off at an altitude of 2.1 kilometers. This then crashed uncontrollably onto the lunar surface. To prevent such a glitch from happening again, the software and hardware of many components of Chandrayaan-3 have been improved.
Complicated landing maneuver without a parachute
Landing on the moon is considered a difficult maneuver. Because there is no atmosphere on the satellite, no landing parachutes can be used, such as on Mars. The landing of Chandrayaan-3 was therefore preceded by a complicated maneuver that successively reduced the speed and flight altitude with control engines according to a specific sequence program. Last weekend, Russia had to experience that a moon landing is not easy with its Luna-25 mission. Apparently, the brake engines had given too much thrust during the landing approach. The probe, which was decelerated too much, had hit the moon at about 5000 kilometers per hour. The same thing happened to an Israeli spacecraft four years ago.
Launched on July 14, the lunar vehicle, consisting of a propulsion module and a landing module, swung into an elliptical lunar orbit after a four-week flight. On Aug 20, the lander and propulsion module separated. The latter now approached the moon’s surface on its own orbit to within 30 kilometers. The actual landing approach then began at around 2:00 p.m. German time. The lander flew to its target in a horizontal orientation on a parabolic path. The speed was gradually throttled from an initial 1600 meters per second to 300 meters per second. At an altitude of about one kilometer, the aircraft straightened up and made its final landing. The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, which is still in lunar orbit despite its crashed lander, serves as a relay station between the lander and the ground station.
The successful moon landing is a good starting point for India’s further space plans. In the near future, ISRO wants to send its own astronauts into space with an Indian spaceship. A permanently inhabited space station in Earth orbit is also in the pipeline. ISRO also intends to send unmanned space probes to Venus and Mars. India has already shown in 2014 with the Mars mission “Mangalyaan-1” that it can carry out interplanetary space flights. The probe orbited the red planet for around seven and a half years.
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India, which maintains close ties with Russia and China in the field of space travel, is becoming increasingly attractive to the United States as well. ISRO is to become a partner in NASA’s Artemis mission, which aims to establish a space station in orbit around the moon and land astronauts on the moon. The chances of Indian astronauts getting a ride to the moon should have increased significantly with today’s success.
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