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Chandrayaan 3 Moon landing: Prayers and excitement are reverberating across the country for the successful landing of India’s Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon’s South Pole. Ahead of the groundbreaking landing on Moon, Padma Shri recipient Sudarsan Pattnaik created a sand art on Chandrayaan-3 Mission on Wednesday. The sand art included a national flag, ISRO’s logo, rocket in which Chandrayaan-3 was launched, Chandrayaan 3 spacecraft close to the Moon and ‘Jay Ho with All the best Chandrayaan’ written on the innovative design.
Today, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is poised to make its historic touchdown on the Moon’s surface, marking a pivotal moment for India’s space exploration endeavors.
The live telecast of the landing operations will begin at 5:20 PM IST on Wednesday. Live actions of landing will be available on the ISRO website, its YouTube channel, Facebook, and public broadcaster DD National TV from 5:27 PM IST today.
The landing of Chandrayaan-3 comes just days after Russia’s first Moon mission in almost 50 years, destined for the same region, crashed on the lunar surface.
But former Indian space chief K. Sivan said the latest photos transmitted back home by the lander gave every indication that the final leg of the voyage would succeed.
“It is giving some encouragement that we will be able to achieve the landing mission without any problem,” Sivan told AFP news agency.
Sivan said India’s efforts to explore the relatively unmapped lunar south pole would make a “very, very important” contribution to scientific knowledge.
A day ahead of the landing, the ISRO said on social media the landing was proceeding on schedule and that its mission control complex was “buzzed with energy & excitement”.
“Smooth sailing is continuing,” the agency posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The ₹600 crore Chandrayaan-3 mission was launched on July 14 onboard Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM-3) rocket, for a 41-day voyage to reach near the lunar south pole. Post its launch on July 14, Chandrayaan-3 entered into the lunar orbit on August 5, following which orbit reduction maneuvers were carried out on the satellite on August 6, 9, 14, and 16, ahead of the separation of both its modules on August 17, in the run-up to the landing on August 23. Earlier, over five moves in the three weeks since the July 14 launch, ISRO had lifted the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft into orbits farther and farther away from the Earth. Then, on August 1 in a key manoeuvre — a slingshot move — the spacecraft was sent successfully towards the Moon from Earth’s orbit. Following this trans-lunar injection, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft escaped from orbiting the Earth and began following a path that would take it to the vicinity of the moon.
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Updated: 23 Aug 2023, 08:20 AM IST
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