On October 22, 2008, India launched the Chandrayaan-1 mission, which led to a groundbreaking discovery of water on the Moon’s South Pole. This discovery renewed global interest in lunar exploration, prompting regular missions to the Moon by countries like the USA and China. While India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission faced failure due to a software glitch during its soft landing attempt in 2019, the country is eagerly anticipating the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
There are several types of lunar missions, each with unique goals and complexities. The simplest type is the fly-by mission, where a spacecraft passes by the Moon without orbiting it. Orbiter missions involve spacecraft orbiting the Moon, studying its surface and atmosphere. Impact missions, an extension of orbiter missions, involve detaching a part of the spacecraft that crash-lands on the Moon, collecting data during the descent.
Lander missions aim for a soft landing on the Moon, while rover missions deploy small robots to explore the lunar surface. Human missions involve sending astronauts to the Moon’s surface, with the last successful attempt carried out by NASA in 1972.
Chandrayaan-2, India’s second lunar mission, aimed to place a rover on the Moon’s South Pole. However, it encountered a software glitch during its landing attempt, leading to its failure. The Vikram Lander crashed during the landing, and despite initial claims of intactness, ISRO later confirmed its destruction. The mission’s partial success stemmed from the functioning of its orbiter, which continues to provide high-resolution images of the Moon.
Chandrayaan-3 is designed to address the objectives that Chandrayaan-2 could not achieve. Several modifications have been made to reduce risks. The landing area has been expanded, the Vikram Lander carries more fuel for extended landing attempts, software upgrades have been implemented, and Vikram can now spin faster if required. Additionally, Vikram will not rely solely on photos for landing, using data from Chandrayaan-2’s orbiter to select a suitable landing site.
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Chandrayaan-3 consists of three modules: the Lander Module, the Rover Module, and the Propulsion Module. The propulsion module maneuvers Chandrayaan-3 into lunar orbit before the lander and rover are deployed for landing. While the mission is designed to explore the Moon’s south pole and place a rover, it faces challenges due to the lunar night’s extreme cold, which the instruments cannot withstand.
The Pragyan rover on Chandrayaan-3 carries two instruments, LIBS and APXS, to analyze the chemical composition of the Moon’s soil and rocks. Vikram Lander’s instruments include RAMBHA, ChaSTE, Ilsa, and LRA, which will analyze the Moon’s ionosphere, thermal properties, seismic activity, and provide accurate distance measurements
Chandrayaan-3’s success holds significance for India, aiming to become the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the Soviet Union, the USA, and China. The mission also carries a sense of national pride. India’s next major space mission, Gaganyaan, aims to send astronauts into orbit, originally scheduled for 2022 but now expected in 2025.
In the broader context, Russia’s recent Luna 25 mission to the Moon ended in failure with a crash landing. The USA’s Artemis II mission plans to send astronauts to orbit the Moon in November 2024, and China also has plans for lunar missions involving human astronauts in the coming years.