Chandrayaan-3 Landing May Be Postponed If 'Conditions Unfavourable'; ISRO to Take Call 2 Hrs Before Touchdown

A crucial decision regarding Chandrayaan-3‘s Moon landing, determined two hours before its scheduled touchdown at 6:04 pm on August 23 based on module health and lunar conditions, will ultimately dictate whether the landing will take place on Wednesday or gets postponed to August 27, a senior ISRO official said on Monday.

Nilesh M Desai, Director of Space Applications Centre-ISRO, Ahmedabad, said, the space agency will postpone the ambitious lunar landing mission to Sunday if factors do not appear favourable during their assessment on Wednesday. “Two hours before Chandrayaan-3 lands on the Moon, we will take a decision on whether or not it will be appropriate to land it at that time based on the health of the lander module and the conditions on the Moon. In case, if any factor appears to be not favourable, then we will land the module on the Moon on August 27,” he said.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman Dr S Somnath has said no contingencies are expected on Wednesday. Somnath made the statement during his meeting with Union Minister Jitendra Singh in New Delhi in which he apprised the senior minister about the status and readiness of Chandrayaan-3 for the moon landing scheduled on 23 August.

“All systems are working perfectly and no contingencies are anticipated on Wednesday,” the ISRO chief told Singh. “In the next two days, the health of Chandrayaan-3 will be continuously monitored. The final sequence of landing will be loaded two days ahead and tested out,” he said.

Achieving success with Chandrayaan-3 would position India as the fourth nation to triumphantly land on the moon, following the former USSR, the United States and China, and uniquely, the first to touch down on the challenging lunar south pole. Launched on July 14, India’s third lunar mission embarked on a more intricate 41-day journey to reach the moon.

The mission life of the lander and rover is one lunar day or 14 earth days.

Former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair described the lunar landing as a “complex manoeuvre” and stressed seamless coordination among all systems to ensure success. Nair, who led the space agency during the launch of Chandrayaan-1 mission in 2008, said, It’s a very complex manoeuvre. We narrowly missed it (soft-landing on the Moon in Chandrayaan-2 mission) in the last two kilometres (above the lunar surface).”

With thrusters, sensors, altimeters and computer software operating in unison, any glitch could jeopardise the mission. “We have to be really cautious and watch. Of course, I understand that ISRO has done enough simulations and also redundancies have been built in so that chances of such failure are remote. Still, we have to keep our fingers crossed,” he said.

(With inputs from ANI, PTI)