Chandryaan-3 Only This Far From Moon! Tweets ISRO

ISRO completed its first Moon-bound maneuver late on Sunday, a day after Chandrayaan-3 entered into an elliptical lunar orbit. At Apolune (the farthest point from the Moon), the spacecraft’s altitude was decreased from 18,074km to 4,313km.

“The spacecraft successfully underwent a planned orbit reduction manoeuvre. The retro-firing of engines brought it closer to the Moon’s surface, now to 170 km x 4313 km. The next operation to further reduce the orbit is scheduled for August 9, 2023, between 1pm and 2pm,” ISRO tweeted.

Since its launch on July 14, Chandrayaan-3 has completed eight major manoeuvres: five Earth-bound manoeuvres between July 15 and 25, which increased its altitude to more than 1.2 lakh km at Apogee (farthest point from Earth), the trans-lunar injection (TLI) on August 1, which put it in a path towards the Moon at an altitude of nearly 3.6 lakh km, the lunar orbit insertion (LOI) and the first lunar-bound manoeuvre on Saturday.

After Sunday’s lunar maneuver, ISRO will do three more Moon-bound maneuvers to gradually reduce the spacecraft’s altitude before attempting to detach the landing modules — Vikram (the lander) and Pragyan (the rover) — from the propulsion module.
The integrated spacecraft will have to do something before the landing module detaches from the propulsion module.

The integrated spacecraft will have to achieve a 100km circular orbit around the Moon before the landing module detaches from the propulsion module.

Following lander separation, Vikram will be placed in a 100km x 30km orbit around the Moon, and Isro will attempt to soft-land the lander on the lunar surface at 5.47pm on August 23. To acheive the landing, series of complex braking manoeuvres will take place to soft land in South Polar region.

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