Chandrayaan-3: Lander separated from propulsion module

India's much anticipated Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft's lander module successfully separated from the propulsion module today at 1 pm, said ISRO.

The spacecraft has completed all of its Moon-bound manoeuvres on Wednesday. ISRO revealed the successful separation of the lander through a post on the X formerly known as Twitter.

The separation of the lander module comprises the lander and rover from the propulsion module. After separation, the lander is expected to undergo a 'deboost' (the process of slowing down) to place it in an orbit where the Perilune (closest point to the Moon) is 30 kilometres and Apolune (farthest point from the Moon) is 100 km. From this orbit, the soft landing on the south polar region of the Moon will be attempted on August 23, ISRO has said.

The space agency's chairman S Somanath recently said that the most critical part of the landing is the process of bringing down the velocity of the lander when it begins its descent from a height of 30 km to the final landing (position) and that the ability to transfer the spacecraft from horizontal to vertical direction is the "trick we have to play" here. "The velocity at the start of the landing process is almost 1.68 km per second, but this speed is horizontal to the surface of the moon. The Chandrayaan-3 here is tilted almost 90 degrees.  

Further, it has to be ensured that fuel consumption is less, the distance calculation is correct, and all the algorithms are working properly, he added.

Over five moves in the three weeks since the July 14 launch, ISRO lifted the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft into orbits farther and farther away from 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, Chandrayaan-3 escaped from orbiting the Earth and began following a path that would take it to the vicinity of the Moon, and eventually into Moon's orbit.

Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 (2019) to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the Moon's surface. It comprises an indigenous propulsion module, lander module, and a rover with the objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for inter-planetary missions. The propulsion module, other than carrying the lander and rover configuration till about 100 km lunar orbit, carries the Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study spectral and polarimetric measurements of the Earth from lunar orbit.

(with PTI inputs)