Team Blitz India
NEW DELHI: The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft completed its fifth and final orbit-raising manoeuvre on July 25, preparing for lunar insertion. The next step is to shift to an Earth-to-Moon trajectory, where the Moon’s gravity will eventually pull it into lunar orbit. The ultimate goal is a soft landing on the lunar surface.
The orbit-raising manoeuvre (Earth-bound perigee firing) was performed successfully from ISTRAC/ISRO, Bengaluru. The spacecraft is expected to attain an orbit of 127609 km x 236 km. The achieved orbit will be confirmed after the observations,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) tweeted.
ISRO added that the next firing, the TransLunar Injection (TLI), is planned for August 1, between 12 midnight and 1 am IST.
Chandrayaan-3, India’s third Moon mission, took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Station in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on July 14. It is expected to reach the moon’s South Pole for a soft landing with a lander and rover on August 23.
