Chandrayaan 3 Lifts Off from Sriharikota, India’s 3rd Lunar Mission

Sriharikota: ISRO’s Chandrayaan 3 soared towards the moon on Friday to India in the club of nations that accomplished lunar missions with a soft landing. Till now only United States, China and the former Soviet Union have achieved this feat.

‘Fat boy’ LVM3-M4 rocket, which was launched, carries the Chandrayaan-3. The 43.5 metre tall rocket, lifted off from the second launch pad at pre-fixed time at 2.35 pm. It is the largest and heaviest LVM3 rocket, also called the ‘Bahubali Rocket’. It has completed six consecutive successful missions.

Chandrayaan 3 is planned to have its soft landing on moon’s surface in late August after a journey of around 40 days.

Chandrayaan-3 mission consists of an indigenous propulsion module, lander module and a rover with an objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for inter-planetary missions.

The LVM3 rocket is a composite of three modules — propulsion, lander and rover (which is housed inside the lander).

The LVM3 rocket will launch the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft into a Geo Transfer Orbit.

The launch is being held in July because the earth and moon are closer to each other during this period.

According to scientists, around 16 minutes after lift-off, propulsion module is expected to get separated from the rocket to orbit the earth for about 5-6 times in an elliptical cycle with 170 km closest and 36,500 km farthest from earth moving towards the lunar orbit.

The propulsion module along with the lander, after gaining speed would proceed for an over a month long journey towards reaching the orbit of the moon until it goes 100 km above the lunar surface.

After reaching the desired position, the Vikram lander module would begin its descent for a soft landing on the south pole region of the moon and this action is expected to take place on August 23 or 24.

The moon’s south pole region has been chosen because there could be a possibility of presence of water there.

After the soft-landing, The Pragyan Rover would come out of the lander module and study the surface of the moon. Rover has a mission life of 1 lunar day (14 Earth days).