India’s Chandrayaan-3 on its way to next stop, the Moon

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced on Tuesday that Chandrayaan-3 has successfully completed its orbits around the Earth and is currently on its way towards the Moon.

The orbiting maneuver was performed successfully from the Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) station in Bengaluru, the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. 

“ISRO has injected the spacecraft into the translunar orbit. Next stop: the Moon,” the national space agency said on Twitter.

Chandrayaan-3, consisting of a propulsion module, Vikram lander, and the small Pragyan rover, is expected to reached lunar orbit on August 5, after which its liquid engine will be fired again to insert the spacecraft into lunar orbit. 

The ISRO had previously announced plans to attempt a soft landing on the lunar surface on August 23. Following the launch of the mission on July 14, the spacecraft’s orbit was systematically raised in five stages, according to ISRO data.

The spacecraft is intended to be the first to land in the southern polar region of the Moon, a largely unexplored area. The main objectives of the mission are to safely land on the lunar surface, collect data, and conduct a series of experiments to learn more about the Moon’s composition. 

The lunar vehicles Vikram and Pragyan will collect scientific evidence from the surface for 14 Earth days, the same duration as a single day on the Moon.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission, estimated to cost around 6 billion rupees ($73 million), was launched three years after the previous effort to explore the surface of the Moon ended in failure. If the mission is successful, India will become just the fourth country to have achieved a soft lunar landing, joining the United States, the Soviet Union, and China.

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