Chandrayaan-3 landing

Chandrayaan-3 · 2023 CE · The Moon

Chandrayaan-3 landing — Chandrayaan-3 · 2023 CE · The Moon — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Demonstrate a safe, soft landing at a high southern latitude of the Moon, a rover drive and experiments on the surface, four years after Chandrayaan-2's lander crashed.

Historical context

India's third lunar mission came four years after the lander of Chandrayaan-2 crashed in 2019. It aimed for the high southern latitudes, near a region where permanently shadowed craters may hold water ice, and it landed four days after Russia's Luna-25, also bound for the south polar region, crashed. Its lander, Vikram, set down at about 69 degrees south, some 600 kilometres from the pole.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Toward the south pole

    14 July 2023

    At 14:35 Indian Standard Time on 14 July 2023, 09:05 UTC, an LVM3 rocket lifts Chandrayaan-3 off from Sriharikota; on 5 August the spacecraft brakes into lunar orbit.

  2. The lander separates

    17 August 2023

    On 17 August the lander Vikram, named after Vikram Sarabhai, founder of India's space agency, casts off the propulsion module and begins to lower its orbit.

  3. Nineteen minutes down

    23 August 2023

    On 23 August Vikram begins its powered descent, planned for about 17:45 Indian Standard Time, and brakes on its own from about 1.7 kilometres a second.

  4. Landing near the south pole

    23 August 2023

    Shortly after 18:00 Indian Standard Time, about 12:33 UTC, Vikram touches down at about 69 degrees south; hours later the rover Pragyan rolls down its ramp.

  5. A hundred metres of rover tracks

    2023 CE

    Pragyan, Sanskrit for wisdom, drives at a centimetre a second around the lander for some ten days and covers about a hundred metres before both are put to sleep.

Outcome

Vikram landed on 23 August 2023 at about 69.37 degrees south, making India, as ISRO and the press put it, the fourth country to land on the Moon and the first near its south pole; Pragyan drove about 100 metres, and neither woke after the lunar night.

Chandrayaan-3

Indian mission that landed near the Moon's south pole, at about 69 degrees south, in August 2023: the first landing there, as ISRO and the press reported.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

Continue exploring