Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 23: Indian tricolour is now flying on the moon as the Chandrayaan-3 successfully completed the moon mission soft landing the “Vikram” lander on the moon surface near the South Pole at the appointed hour of dot 6.04 P.M. on Wednesday bringing cheer to a billion hearts and propelling India to the elite space club.
Cheers went up not only in the war room of the Indian Space Research Orgainsation (ISRO) in Bengaluru where the scientists were anxiously watching the agonizing last “20 minutes of terror,” but also across the country where the people in school, colleges, home and even in many offices were watching the live telecast of the lander module descending on the moon surface slowly but steadily from a height of more than 30 kilometres.
“From Chandrayaan-3 Mission: ‘India, I reached my destination and you too!’: Chandrayaan-3 has successfully soft-landed on the moon! Congratulations, India,” the space agency said in its post communicating the message received from the Vikram lander making every Indian a proud citizen of the country.
The successful landing of the Chandrayaan-3 mission has made India only the fourth country in the world after the erstwhile USSR (Soviet Union), the United States and China to land on the moon surface but the first country to land on the hitherto unexplored South Pole region where the traces of water and ice is believed to have been found making it a hot destination for further exploration.
The touchdown took place at 6.04 pm amid huge cheers in the war room of space agency ISRO. Social media was flooded with congratulatory messages.
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who joined in the event online from South Africa, where he is attending the BRICS Summit, said: “This moment is precious and unprecedented. This moment announces the victory of new India. This moment is the strength of 1.4 billion heartbeats.”
“India reached the uncharted lunar South Pole because of our scientists’ hard work and talent… Our moon mission is also based on the human-centric approach, which is why the success belongs to all humanity. It will help moon missions by the other countries in the future,” Modi said.
After about two to four hours when the dust particles settled down, the “Pragyan” rover will roll out of the lander and start its assigned works exploring the moon surface. The successful landing has kicked up a lot of fine dust. The rover Pragyan will roll out only when the dust has moved away. Unlike Earth, the dust will not settle in moon easily given its lower gravitation.
For the next 14 days — equivalent to one moon day — the Pragyan Rover will send images and data from the surface of the moon. After 14 days, its activity is likely to slow down, given that it is powered by solar cells. But the scientists are not sure if the lander and the rover would resume their works after a gap of 14 days, when it will be night in moon and temperature going down to about minus 180 degrees Celsius, and the day breaks out again.
The landing was preceded by a number of subtle manoeuvrings. The Vikram, which was powered by four engines, cut off two to lose speed over the last 30 km and achieve the tricky soft landing.
In each of the stages, Vikram slowly moved towards the Moon and began the vertical descent in the final stages. Each successful stage saw celebrations from ISRO officials at the mission control room. When it finally landed on the lunar surface, all the officials erupted in joy. Project director P Veeramuthuvel said that the lander completed all the stages “flawlessly”.
Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 and its objectives are to demonstrate safe and soft-landing on the lunar surface, roving on the Moon, and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.
The moon lander was launched on July 14, perched on a LVM 3 heavy-lift launch vehicle. It was placed in the lunar orbit on August 5. The lander Vikram is named after Vikram Sarabhai, who is widely regarded as the father of the Indian space programme.
After the moon mission, ISRO has a number of projects lined up – one of them a mission to study the Sun, and a human space flight programme, Gaganyaan. Aditya-L1, the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun, is getting ready for the launch, most likely in the first week of September.