Milestone for ISRO, slings Chandrayaan-3 into lunar phase

Chennai: Heralding a major milestone in India's third moon mission, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft moved out of the earth orbits and was successfully slinged into the Lunar Orbit on Monday midnight and is heading towards the moon.

With this challenging accomplishment, the spacecraft, has moved yet another step closer in the mission ahead of soft landing on the Lunar surface that will happen in the third week of August.

In a tweet, ISRO said "Chandrayaan-3 completes its orbits around the Earth and heads towards the Moon."

"A successful perigee-firing performed at ISTRAC, ISRO has injected the spacecraft into the translunar orbit", it said.

"Next stop: the Moon--As it arrives at the moon, the Lunar-Orbit Insertion (LOI) is planned for Aug 5, 2023", ISRO said.

"The coming 23 days are very crucial and the ISRO scientists will be monitoring the spacecraft round the clock from the ground stations", ISRO sources said after the successful entry of Chandrayaan-3 into the Lunar phase", ISRO sources.

ISRO sources said the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was successfully injected into the TransLunar Injection (TLI) orbit by firing the onboard thruster motors from the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru.

Having entered the Lunar orbit, the spacecraft's orbit will be further manuevred for the soft landing on August 23 evening to explore the hitherto unexplored south pole region of the moon.

The success of the soft landing would propel India to join a select group of space faring nations to achieve this historic milestone. Only US, the then Soviet Union and China have achieved this feat so far.

India too nearly achieved it in its maiden attempt when it launched Chandrayaan-2 in July 2019, before the lander crash landed very close to the landing spot, making the mission about 99.99 per cent success. (UNI)