The mission follows Chandrayaan-2 where scientists aim to demonstrate various capabilities including reaching the orbit of the moon, making a soft-landing on the lunar surface using a lander, and a rover coming out of the lander to study the surface of the moon.
Sixteen minutes after lift-off, propulsion module successfully separated from the rocket and would orbit the earth for about 5-6 times in an elliptical cycle with 170 km closest and 36,500 km farthest from earth moving towards the lunar orbit.
To witness the event live, you can watch the streaming of the launch on ISRO's official website and YouTube channel.
The landing time is estimated as on Thursday (July 13) for nominal conditions. And the first step in that direction will begin with the launch of LVM3 at 2.35pm Friday, the countdown for which began Thursday.
Istrac’s Bengaluru centre will take control of the satellite to perform multiple Earth-bound manoeuvres. As per the initial plan, there will be five such manoeuvres to be carried out on different days until July 31, and at the end of the last Earth-bound operation, the spacecraft is expected to attain an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of around 1-lakh-km.
From here, the journey towards Moon — called trans-lunar insertion phase — will begin, and the spacecraft is expected to capture the lunar orbit 5.5 days later.
After lunar orbit insertion, Isro will perform a series of manoeuvres to take the craft to a circular orbit of 100km where the lander module will separate, following which its height is further to take it to an elliptical orbit with the closest point to Moon being around 30km. From here, the lander will land and the rover will later roll out.
“Unlike Chandrayaan-2, when the landing was scheduled at such a time locally that it could be tracked through the Madrid (JPL) ground station. This time we’ll do it when tracking is possible from the Istrac Bengaluru centre. As of today (Jul 13), the landing should be complete by 5.47pm on August 23. This may change based on how the whole process from the launch to reaching to Moon goes,” a senior scientist explained.
While eight Chandrayaan-2 payloads have been sending remote-sensing data since 2019, Chandrayaan-3 will add seven more scientific instruments — one of which will go around Moon and six will be on Moon.
The spacecraft has successfully taken off from Earth and is now in orbit around the planet in its journey towards the Moon. It has many critical events lined up, including earth-bound manoeuvres, insertion into the lunar orbit, separation of the lander, a set of deboost manoeuvres and a power descent phase for a soft landing, according to P muthuvel, project director of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission is hitching a ride to space on ISRO’s most powerful rocket—the Launch Vehicle Mark-III. The launch vehicle is powered by two S2000 solid rocket boosters that will provide the thrust required for takeoff. The L110 liquid stage will take over once the solid boosters separate from the launch vehicle. After the liquid stage is separated, the CE25 cryogenic stage will power the vehicle.
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