Chandrayaan-3 made India the first nation to land near the lunar South Pole and only the fourth to achieve a controlled lunar landing.
Chandrayaan-3, India’s moon mission, was delayed by four seconds during launch-off to avoid potential collisions with debris objects and satellites, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) revealed in a recent report.
“For LVM3-M4/ Chandrayaan-3, the nominal lift-off had to be delayed by 4 seconds based on COLA analysis to avoid close approaches between a debris object and the injected satellites in their orbital phase due to overlapping operational altitudes,” the space agency said in a blog post on Friday.
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S Somanath, chairperson of ISRO, unveiled the Indian Space Situational Assessment Report (ISSAR) for 2023, an annual overview of the space situation, prepared by ISRO’s System for Safe and Sustainable Space Operations Management (IS4OM) earlier this month.
The report highlighted the vulnerability of space assets to various environmental risks, such as asteroids, comets, meteoroids, and artificial space objects. It stressed continuous awareness for assessing close approaches of satellites and launch vehicles, predicting atmospheric re-entry, and studying the evolution of space objects.
The report added no close approaches were detected safe lift-off of launch vehicles. added close approaches were detected as safe
Post-launch, ISRO confirmed that there were no detected close approaches with other space objects during the Chandrayaan-3 mission and the Earth-bound phase of Aditya-L1.
Chandrayaan-3: India’s moonshot
India’s lunar mission, Chandrayaan 3, embarked on its journey from the ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on July 14. Approximately a month later, on August 23, the Vikram lander, accompanied by the Pragyan Rover, successfully landed on the moon.
This made India the first nation to land near the lunar South Pole and only the fourth to achieve a controlled lunar landing.
After 10 days of exploration on the lunar surface, both the lander and rover entered a dormant state. The propulsion module remained in the lunar orbit which it had attained after separating from the lander.
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Indian Space Situational Assessment Report 2023 | Top points
• A total of 127 Indian satellites were launched from the inception of the Indian space programme until December 31, 2023.
• The Indian government owns 22 operational satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and 29 in Geo-synchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) as of December 31, 2023.
• Three active Indian deep space missions by the end of 2023: Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter, Aditya-L1, and Chandrayaan-3 Propulsion Module.
• By the end of 2023, 21 Indian satellites had re-entered the atmosphere, with 8 re-entries occurring in 2023 alone. Megha-tropiques-1 underwent controlled re-entry in 2023.
• 82 rocket bodies from Indian launches were placed in orbit till 2023, with 52 debris from PSLV-C3 still in orbit by the end of 2023. Thirty-five intact rocket bodies re-entered Earth’s atmosphere till 2023 end, with five re-entries in 2023.
• All seven launches by ISRO in 2023 were successful, including SSLV-D2/EOS7, LVM3-M3/ONEWEB_II, PSLV-C55/TeLEOS-2, GSLV-F12 NVS-01, LVM3-M4/Chandrayaan-3, PSLV-C56/DS-SAR, and PSLV-C57/Aditya L-1. This resulted in the placement of 5 Indian satellites, 46 foreign satellites, and eight rocket bodies (including POEM-2) in their intended orbits.
