Pic Source X (Twitter) @isro
India’s third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, has successfully completed orbits around the Earth and August 5, 2023, is the scheduled date for the Lunar-Orbit Insertion (LOI).
With the aim of exploring the moon’s surface, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission is making significant strides. The spacecraft was launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on July 14th from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on an LVM3-M4 rocket, successfully completing its fourth orbital ascent maneuver, and currently has a circumference of 71,351 km x 233 km around the Earth.
ISRO thought Twitter announced that, “Chandrayaan-3 completes its orbits around the Earth and heads towards the Moon. A successful perigee-firing performed at ISTRAC, ISRO has injected the spacecraft into the translunar orbit.” The big happy news added with the tweet is ‘Next stop: the Moon’.
The scheduled TransLunar injection on August 1st from 12:00pm to 1:00am is the next critical step for Chandrayaan 3. According to an ISRO official, the spacecraft has exited the orbit of its home planet and is now en route to the Moon’s vicinity following today’s trans-lunar injection (TLI).
The Chandrayaan-3 is composed of a Lander module (LM), a Propulsion module (PM), and a Rover.On August 17, the PM and LM would be separated. Before the power descent phase for the soft landing on the moon, a series of deboost maneuvers are also planned. The lander is scheduled to land on the moon’s surface on August 23 around 5.47 p.m.
