Countdown in progress for Chandrayaan-3, India's Lunar Mission

ISRO's LVM3 ready on the dock for its Mission 4, at Sriharikota

All eyes are set on ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission being the high-profile launch of the year. Being India's prestigious space agency, whose scientists are keen to taste success with a soft landing on lunar surface to put our country in the very few elite club of nations to have accomplished such a challenging task.

As the clock ticks by, Indian Space Research Organisation will launch the hugely anticipated mission from Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota, at 2.35 pm on Friday. Dubbed 'Fat boy', the Launch Vehicle Mark 3, in its Mission 4, (LVM3-M4) rocket will liftoff with the payload, Chandrayaan-3, on Friday as part of the country's ambitious mission to the moon. Subsequently the soft landing on moon's surface, is anticipated around late August.

A soft landing it the pursuit of this mission, very much similar to China's lunar expedition. USA & Russian (former USSR) had both landed with a passive soft touchdown with the help of inflatable balloons to absorb the shock from the impact from the hard touchdown.

A 'soft landing' literally means to land on the surface with an active-controlled-descent, where the Lander Module carrying Rover onboard inside of it will multiple rocket thrusters to orient itself to make a soft touch down on the lunar surface.

A soft touch down is an important process for retaining the payloads overall functional health, so that both the Lander Module & Rover can achieve their objectives to carry out the scientific tasks. This whole exercise will also be a test-bed for further manned missions, where a proven technology can help overcome possible disaster, just like in the case of Chandrayaan-2.

In the earlier attempt back in 2019 with Chandrayaan-2, ISRO's top priority project had failed to achieve the desired soft landing on the moon surface. Dejected by the failure, ISRO team has been working arduously ever since to achieve the evaded success in their previous attempt. The emotional images of then ISRO chief K Sivan being consoled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi (who was present to witness the rare feat) remains vividly in the memory of many of us.

Scientists at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here, after investing many hours of hard work, now aim at mastering the technology of soft-landing on the surface of the moon. A success would make India only the fourth country to achieve the feat after the United States, China and the former Soviet Union.

The space agency said,

"Chandrayaan-3 is the third lunar exploration mission ready for takeoff in the fourth operational mission (M4) of LVM3 launcher. ISRO is crossing new frontiers by demonstrating soft-landing on the lunar surface by its lunar module and demonstrating roving on the lunar terrain. 

The 25.30 hour countdown for the launch is under way."

Chandrayaan-3 mission consists of indigenous developed Propulsion Module (PM), Lander Module (LM) and the Rover, with an objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for inter-planetary missions. The mission is expected to be supportive technological run-up to future interplanetary missions.