New from the side of the Indian space program, we know that the Chandrayaan 3 mission, which aims to land on the Moon, might be postponed to 2023. However, work continues within ISRO or Indian Space Research Organization to achieve what the previous mission unfortunately might not accomplish.
According to S. Somanath, President of ISRO, the Chandrayaan 3 lander is currently in the full assembly phase. The team is testing all vital systems, which means the launch might be next year instead of this year. Somanath explained that they were testing the propulsion system as that was what caused the problem last time. During the 2019 Chandrayaan 2 mission, a lander carrying a rover was indeed to reach the lunar surface following the orbiter was placed in orbit. But the Vikram lander crashed due to loss of thruster control.
Apart from this lunar mission, theISRO also continues to work on its first manned spaceflight.
A change at the system level
According to Somanath, engineers made changes to the lander’s propulsion system. The latter is currently being tested at the Mahendragiri Liquid Propulsion Center, and the team is testing the propulsion integration, on-board computer and sensor systems.
According to the information, the data collected so far is promising. ISRO remains cautious, however. Somanath said they know how to reach the Moon, but what will have to be learned is how to land.
Unlike the Chandrayaan 2 mission, Chandrayaan 3 will not have an orbiter but only a lander and a rover. The landing zone will be near a pole of the Moon, and the mission will last for one lunar day, that is, 14 Earth days. The devices are not designed to survive the extreme cold of the lunar night.
Progress of the manned mission
Although the next step for ISRO will be to reach the surface of the Moon, the agency is also making progress in launching astronauts.
On April 4, the state company Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. delivered the first elements intended for the Gaganyaan manned mission. In March, India’s Space Minister Jitendra Singh told parliament that the design of all Gaganyaan mission systems and subsystems had been completed.
The next step for ISRO will be to test the mission abort sequences, tests that are expected to take place in August or December. These tests will be used to verify the ability of the emergency systems to bring astronauts to safety in the event of a problem during the launch. This step is vital before the first orbital flight and sending astronauts into space.
The Gaganyaan mission was announced in August 2018, with the initial goal of sending astronauts into space ahead of the 75th India’s independence anniversary on August 15, 2022. However, ISRO announced in 2021 that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this flight would be postponed to 2023. Today, test flights are expected to take place in 2023, and the first Indian manned flight might thus only be carried out in 2024.
SOURCE: Space.com
