India launches historic Chandrayaan-3 Check live Update Now

Chandrayan-3 mission is to land a spacecraft on the Moon and it will be the fourth nation to do so. We see a lot of people talking about building colonies on the Moon and the starting point is always the landing on Moon. Landing on Moon was previously attempted by India on previous occasions but it did not happen successfully. Four years back Chandrayan-2 was launched but its landing rover crashed due to a software glitch and fell on the Moon’s surface. Let us find out more about what is in store with this Moon landing.

The Chandrayan-3 spacecraft was on top of the launch vehicle, Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3). It was taken straight from the Sathish Dhawan Space Center in the Shriharikota coastal region. It was released on July 14th, 2023, local time as per IST settings at 2:35 pm. After sixteen minutes of liftoff, Chandrayan unscrewed from the launcher and entered Earth’s orbit superseding Earth’s escape velocity.

Detailed about Chandrayan-3 spacecraft

If the Chandrayan-3 reaches the Moon’s surface, India will be the fourth nation after the United States, Russia, and China to achieve this feat. All of it was done at a generous price tag of 6 billion rupees amounting to $73 million. This time, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) has successfully launched it and is confident it would land on Moon.

Once the Chandrayan takes its egg-shaped course across the Moon’s orbit, it will increase the speed to reach Moon and land. The Moon’s South Pole is where they tend to land the spacecraft which is an unchartered region India dreams to first get to.

Why is everyone pinning their hopes on this mission? Primarily it is as the mission specializes in precisely landing the Chandrayan-3 in a specific location on the lunar surface. 

The landing zone measures 2.5 miles by 1.5 miles (4 km by 2.5 km). It will be sitting at 69.367621 in the south latitude and 32.348126 east longitude. It is exactly close to the Russian lunar planned touchdown site of Luna’s 25 spacecraft. The Russian Luna-25 will touchdown in August. The lunar South Pole harbors abundant water in the form of ice and those scientists believe can work as rock fuel if mined appropriately. The water ice of the Moon can also work well to support and maintain life. 

Thereby the site will be extremely essential for life support and a target for many other countries due to its abundant water reserve. Those missions who tried reaching the South Pole have failed so far and some have landed on the Moon’s equator conveniently. 

Also at the South Pole, the sunlight is sufficient to manage the solar-powered spacecraft. These South Polar Regions receive diffuse sunlight but the long shadows do create a challenge in landing on the South Pole but then it’s worth the risk.