No matter what "LVM-3" will land!
ISRO Chairman S Somanath claimed the Chandrayaan-3 mission will surely make a perfect landing on the moon even if two or all engines and sensors fail or the Vikram lander itself stops working (2).
The claims were confident which sets beating all the hearts of Indians that are closely keeping an eye on India's very proud Chandrayaan-3 mission. On Tuesday, at an event, the chairman claimed his voice and said, "It will make a soft landing on the moon on August 23."
Somanath landed his viewpoints during a talk hosted by the non-profit organization Disha Bharat and later continued, "If everything fails, if all the sensors fail, nothing works, still 'Vikram' will make it's soft-landing."
He stretched that the design quality is itself developed and crafted with all the possible measures for all the possible consequences and provided that the propulsion systems work perfectly fine.
The proud India Chandrayaan-3 mission took off atop a LVM-3 rocket developed by the Satish Dhawan Space Centre which is located in Sriharikota at 2:35 IST on July 14 of 2023, past month.
After the takeoff and the rocket separated itself from the launch module then the Chardrayaan-3 spacecraft executed multiple maneuvers clinging to the highest Earth orbit in sections before injecting itself into a "translunar" orbit.
The rocket made us proud when the results released of the rocket’s closest point to the moon being 164 km and so far the farthest noted at 18,074 km. Meanwhile to complete the entire maneuver it took around 170 x 4313 km orbit.
Chandrayaan's next orbit was expected to occur today followed by two more maneuvers which are expected to occur on 14 August and 15 August by the time it reaches the destination which is 100 x 100 km orbit (3).
However, by the time it reaches the final orbit the spacecraft will start its deboosting procurement wherein the speed of the craft will slow down right before the lander module separates to land on the lunar surface which is expected to occur on 23 August.
.Somanath continued stating that his team has taken care of everything and as said before if two engines fail to operate, they will still be able to land safely. The algorithm set by his team is perfectly balanced for all possible events.
Chandrayaan-3 and its safe landing will read India’s name into the history books as the fourth-ever country to successfully soft-land on the Moon. Chandrayaan-2 was aimed to do so but due to technical lack their second attempt failed and for their third attempt the team made no compromises.
So far only three countries have been able to achieve such a high feat worldwide which is the United States of America, China, and the Soviet Union of Russia. Meanwhile, there were also other attempts to the Moon from Japan and Israel (with India on the list) but success crashed right before their destination.
Current Situation
There are yet challenges located ahead of the soft-landing and Chandrayaan-3 shall now include transferring from the horizontal to vertical directing for minimizing fuel usage and procuring the mission successfully without any issues.
It will now be required to decrease its movement speed by 1.68km/s horizontally and swiftly move vertically and then bring itself to a zero after obtaining a soft landing on the lunar surface which is considered a major concern, said Somanath.
The current situation is where Somanath recalls having a problem in the previous launch and once this segment is cleared we can expect a safer landing. The rocket will be maneuvered in the vertical direction via a series of steps which is vital considering the previous failure.