CHANDRAYAAN-3
- SCI & TECH
News:
Chandrayaan-3 reaches launch port at
Sriharikota
What
is in the news?
●
Recently, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has
reached the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota from where it is most
likely to be launched in July 2023.
Key
takeaways from the news:
●
After the final assembly of payloads at
the U.R. Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, the spacecraft for India’s third moon mission has reached
Sriharikota.
What
is Chandrayan-3 mission:
●
Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to
Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end
capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.
●
Chandrayaan-3 has been made more robust
based on the experience of what happened at the time of landing for
Chandrayaan-2.
●
The mission is scheduled to be launched
later in 2023 by Launch Vehicle Mark 3
(LVM3) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.
●
This mission is needed to demonstrate the
landing capabilities of the ISRO for the Lunar
Polar Exploration Mission proposed in partnership with Japan for 2024.
●
Objective:
To demonstrate the capability of soft landing on the Moon by delivering a
lander and a rover to the lunar surface.
●
Parts
of the mission: The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft consists of
three parts
○
The
lander module - The lander is designed to make a soft
landing at a specific site on the Moon and deploy the rover.
○
Propulsion
module - This module is to carry the lander and rover from “launch vehicle injection” to a
100-kilometre circular polar lunar orbit before it separates from the other
modules.
○
Rover
- The rover will carry out chemical analysis of the lunar surface.
○
Both the lander and the rover carry many
scientific payloads for experiments on the lunar surface.
Launch
Vehicle Module-3:
●
LVM-3 or Launch Vehicle Mark-III, is a three-stage medium-lift launch vehicle
developed by ISRO and earlier known as the GSLV
Mark III.
●
It is the most powerful rocket in the space agency’s stable and will be used
to launch the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
●
The vehicle is 43.5 metres tall and has a
diameter of 4 metres.
●
It has a lift-off mass of 640 tonnes. It
can carry a payload of upto 8,000
kilograms to a low-Earth orbit.
●
Going further, it is capable of carrying about 4,000 kilograms of payload
to a geostationary transfer orbit.
●
Its cryogenic
upper stage is powered by CE-20, which according to ISRO is India’s largest
cryogenics engine.
●
It also uses two S200 solid rocket boosters to provide the thrust required for
take off.
●
The core
stage is powered by two L110 liquid-stage Vikas rockets.