Chandrayaan-3 jumped to the moon: why?
Before allowing its Chandrayaan-3 mission to sink into the lunar night, India achieved one final milestone. The Vikram lander momentarily “jumped” to the Moon. To do what?
Two weeks after arriving at the Moon, the Chandrayaan-3 mission enters sleep mode. India’s equipment, which has achieved great success in its lunar activities since August 23, 2023, enters the lunar night and is therefore no longer able to operate. But, before plunging into this long sleep, the Vikram lander performed an amazing maneuver: a kind of “jump” onto the lunar surface.
” On command, he started the engines, rose to about 40 cm as planned and landed safely at a distance of 30 to 40 cm. “, ISRO saidIndian Space Agency on September 4. The maneuver was completed successfully. ” All systems are nominally operational and healthy “, adds ISRO. The lander’s instruments, as well as its ramp (which was used to deploy the Pragyan rover), were stored and then redeployed.
In the short video shared by the space agency, we can see the photos taken by Vikram during the maneuver. The images help realize that the lander moved sideways during this very short flight.
The version has been improved subscriber Written by Simon Schmaus, design student at Munich University of Applied Sciences.
Large-scale lunar testing of Chandrayaan-3
But why did the Indian Space Agency decide to take off and then land its lunar module? All attention is focused on the future of space exploration on the Moon: it is a question of preparing future samples, or even manned missions. This “jump” is a life-size test.
If humanity hopes to return lunar samples or land humans on the moon in the future, we will need to be able to take them back. So having Vikram on the moon was a good opportunity for ISRO to experience what lift-off is like. In case there is a future Indian mission to return a sample from the moon? maybe.
With the Chandrayaan-3 mission, India has achieved cumulative successes. Not only did the country manage to land near the lunar south pole, but the Pragyan spacecraft also made an unprecedented discovery on the moon. In just two weeks, Chandrayaan-3 has proven that India is also capable of exploring the moon, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China.
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