Chandrayaan-3 will land on moon even if ‘everything fails': ISRO chief Somnath

Chandrayaan

Even if all things go awry and all controls go haywire, Vikram will land on the moon as per schedule, said Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman S Somnath. The Chandrayaan-3 lander will make a soft landing on the lunar surface on August 23.

“If everything fails, if all the sensors fail, nothing works, still it (Vikram) will make a landing," Somnath confirmed on August 9 at an event organised by NGO Disha Bharat. "The whole design has been made to make sure that it should be able to handle many failures, provided the algorithms work properly. We have also made sure that if two of the engines (in Vikram) don’t work this time, it will still be able to land."

Also Read: Chandrayaan-3 successfully enters Moon's orbit: ISRO

The spacecraft started its voyage, atop an LVM-3 rocket, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota in the afternoon of July 14. After takeoff and separation from the launch module, Chandrayaan-3 executed multiple manoeuvres climbing to a higher Earth orbit each time before finally injecting itself into a 'translunar' orbit.

On August 5, Chandrayaan-3 successfully entered the moon's orbit, ISRO announced.  After the spacecraft reaches the final orbit, it will start a deboost process which will see it come down to a slow halt and finally make the soft landing on August 23.

Chandrayaan-3 Misson | ISRO says, "Even closer to the moon’s surface. Chandrayaan-3's orbit is reduced to 174 km x 1437 km following a manoeuvre performed today. The next operation is scheduled for August 14, 2023, between 11:30 and 12:30 Hrs. IST." (Pic: ISRO) pic.twitter.com/v9fkwc2vef

— ANI (@ANI) August 9, 2023

This mission will take India into the history books as the fourth nation to successfully execute a soft landing on the moon. This could prove to be retribution after Chandrayaan-2 ended in failure.

The other successful nations in this pursuit to land on the moon include the United States, the erstwhile Soviet Union, and China. There have also been privately-led attempts, from Israel and Japan, but neither were successful.