Lander Module expected to touch down on the surface of the moon at 6.04 pm on Wednesday
Bengaluru, Aug 20: Russia has bowed out of the race to the moon with India after its robot lander crashed on the lunar surface, setting Chandrayaan-3 on an easier course while ISRO scientists achieved yet another successful maneouver to take the spacecraft closer to the moon in its soft-landing attempt on August 23.
ISRO on Sunday said it has successfully reduced the orbit of Chandrayaan-3 mission’s Lander Module (LM), comprising the lander ‘Vikram’ and rover ‘Pragyan’, and it is now expected to touch down on the surface of the moon at 6.04 pm (IST) on Wednesday.
This came even as Russian lander Luna-25 crashed into the moon after going into uncontrolled orbit.
“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon,” Russian space agency Roscosmos said in a statement.
Roscosmos said it lost contact with the spacecraft on Saturday after it ran into trouble while preparing for its pre-landing orbit after reporting an “abnormal situation” that its specialists were analysing.
The Luna-25 was launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East on August 10. Luna-25 was supposed to touch the moon surface on August 21, two days before Vikram’s scheduled landing.
Incidentally, the ambitious Chandrayaan-2 had also crashed into the lunar surface four years ago, but its successor has ticked all the orbit-related boxes so far as part of its journey towards the Moon.
ISRO said the second and final deboosting (slowing down) operation has successfully reduced the LM orbit to 25 km x 134 km. The module would undergo internal checks and await the sunrise at the designated landing site. The powered descent is expected to commence on August 23, 2023, around 5.45 pm, ISRO said in a post on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter).
This eagerly anticipated event will be broadcast live on August 23, starting from 5.27 pm IST on multiple platforms, including the ISRO Website, its YouTube channel, the agency’s Facebook page, and DD National TV channel.
Only three countries — the erstwhile Soviet Union, the US and China have achieved successful moon landings, but never on the moon’s south pole. India and Russia were racing to create history by becoming the first countries to do so. (PTI)