‘ISRO well prepared’: Senior scientist explains Chandrayaan-3's landing

Senior scientific officer at Nehru Planetarium in Bengaluru Dr Anand, speaking on Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) moon mission Chandrayaan-3, said that no issues had been seen in any instrument on the lander, which is set to land on the moon on Wednesday around 6:05 pm. He added that ISRO was “very well prepared” for the mission.

Speaking to news agency ANI, Anand explained how Chandrayaan-3 will be landing on the moon. He said that the exercise of the lander landing on moon will begin around 5:45pm on Wednesday.

He further said, “When the lander is 25 kilometres away from the moon, the exercise will start and it will reduce its velocity from 7,000 km/h to 1,200 km/h during the hard breaking phase. The lander will continue to reduce its velocity as it passes through other phases. When it reaches around 0.2 m/s velocity, it will shut off its booster and fall on the moon's surface very safely.”

Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled for a soft landing on the south pole of the moon on Wednesday evening at 6:04 pm. With almost 12 hours left for India's historic moment, the Lander Module — the Vikram lander — is trying to locate the right spot on the Moon's surface for landing.

Anand said that when the lander falls on the moon's surface, it will land on its “stong legs”, which he said have very high shock absorbers. “These will see that there's no harm done to the lander. This is a very difficult procedure, as per the technical challenges that are there.”

He added that once the lander lands, all the other scientific analysis will continue with the instruments that it has onboard.

If everything goes according to the plan successfully, India will enter an elite list, becoming only the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, joining the United States, Russia, and China.

Anand also spoke about ISRO's last moon missions Chandrayaan-2 and said that it was the first attempt in making the landing.

He added, “During the Chandrayaan-2 landing, there were some technical glitches due to which the lander couldn't land on the moon. Looking at the errors, they modified the software, modified the equipment. They have built a much more stronger lander.”

He also said that all the technical difficulties faced during the time of Chandrayaan-2 were modified and taken care of in this mission and hence it had more possibility of landing safely.

Chandrayaan-2 was launched under K Sivan's tenure as ISRO chief in September 2019. The mission had failed in the final stages when Vikram Lander lost communication with the ground state just 2.1 km above the Moon, leaving Indians dejected.