India creates history, Chandrayaan-3 successfully soft lands on Moon’s South Pole

Chennai: Marking a monumental event in its space journey, India scripted history by becoming the first country to explore the South Polar region when its third Lunar Mission Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft successfully soft landed on the Moon's surface on Wednesday evening.

The powered descent of the Lander Module (LM), carrying a Rover, on board the Chandrayaan-3, started at 5.44 pm and after the challenging task of performing rough and fine braking maneuvres, it made a soft landing on the moon's surface at 6.00 pm.

"Chandrayaan-3 landed successfully in Moon. India is in the moon", ISRO Chairman S.Somanath told Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who watched the soft landing process live from South Africa via video conferencing.

"India is now on the moon", Mr Modi said in his address to ISRO scientists and congratulated them for the success of the mission.

After the landing, the LM deployed the Rover to conduct in situ chemical analysis of the Lunar region.

Each and every phase of the descent during which the LM was brought closer to the Moon for landing was greeted with applause by the scientists at MOX, including Mr Somanath.

With this success, India joined the elite group of spacefaring Nations and became the fourth country in the world to achieve this milestone in space exploration after US, the then USSR and China to enter the Lunar Region.

The success of Chandrayaan-3 mission marked the culmination of the 42 day long journey, covering a distance of 3.84 lakh kms after the spacecraft was launched by ISRO's heaviest launch vehicle LVM3-M4 on July 14 from the spaceport of Sriharikota to explore the hitherto unexplored south polar region of the moon.

By achieving this historic milestone, the prayers of billions of people were answered after the entire country and across the world prayed for the success of the mission.

Not only the people of India, the entire world eagerly watched the successful accomplishment of Chandrayaan-3, especially after Russia's Luna-25 Moon Mission failed a few days back.

The Luna-25 crashed while entering the Lunar surface, thus shattering Russia's 47-year-long dream of soft landing, which was also touted as a competition with Chandrayaan-3.

Every passing second leading up to the successful landing was full of anxiety considering that India's last Moon Mission Chandrayaan-2 could not succeed fully in 2019.

Chandrayaan-2 was launched in July 2019 and the Lander, carrying a Rover, crash-landed due to a technical glitch very close to the landing site (about 2 km from the proposed landing site) in September 2019, making the mission 99.99 per cent success.

Significantly, a day before the landing of Chandrayaan-3, ISRO made a leap forward in the mission when Chandrayaan-2 that carried Orbiter-- which is still orbiting the Lunar region after its mission life was increased to seven years--formally welcomed the Lander Module (LM) of Chandryaan-3, thereby establishing the two way communication.

The Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter will be serving as the backup communication channel for ISRO with the Chandrayaan-3 lander.

The powered descent for soft landing was carried after the ISRO Scientists, who have been spending sleepless nights, conducted regular checks at the Mission Operations Complex (MOX) at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), in Bengaluru which was a beehive of activity and has been buzzing with confidence, energy and excitement.

After initiating the Automatic Landing Sequence and uploading the commands and analysing the telemtery signals, the powered descent of the lander started from a height of about 25 km with a speed of 1.6 km per second. The scientists focussed on reducing this speed since the Moon's gravitational force also came into play, to ensure a soft landing.

After the ALS was initiated, the LM activated the throttleable engines for the powered descent.

The soft landing involved a tricky and challenging task as it involved a series of complex manoeuvres that included rough and fine braking.

Prior to landing, the sensors in the LM imaged the landing site for locating safe and hazard-free zones.

The lander was hurtled towards the moon in a horizontal position by deploying the commands. The rough braking lasted 11 minutes and the further descent was done with fine braking.

The lander was then changed to vertical position after which it hovered over the moon, surveyed the landing zone and decided on the safe landing spot.

ISRO Chairman S.Somanath had earlier said ISRO had learnt lessons after the Chandrayaan-2 Vikram Lander crashed landed and lost communication with the ground stations in Setpmber 2019.

Since then several had been made to the Lander Module to make the Chandrayaan-3 mission a success.

This included strengthening of the landers’ legs, reduction in the number of engines, increasing the quantity of propellant, inclusion of new sensors among others.

He said this time they have made all the systems more robust and have changed the guidance design and introduced newer algorithms.

The lander and the rover with a mission life of one Lunar day (14 earth days) have scientific payloads to carry out experiments on the lunar surface.

The mass of the Lander including the Rover is 1749.86 kg.

The mission objectives of Chandryaan-3 are to demonstrate safe and soft landing on the Lunar surface, to demonstrate Rover roving on  the moon and to conduct scientific experiments on the Lunar site.

To achieve the mission objectives, several advanced technologies are present in Lander. (UNI)