Chandrayaan-3 latest updates: Why soft landing on Moon’s dark side is difficult?

Chandrayaan-3 latest updates: The highly anticipated landing time of India’s third edition of the lunar mission series is less than 48 hours away – scheduled for Wednesday at 6.04 pm. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has also announced that a live telecast is planned for the event, starting at 5.20 pm on that day.

On Monday, Chandrayaan-3’s Lander Module established two-way communication with the already present Chandrayaan-2’s orbiter – the second edition of the lunar mission series, launched in 2019 for the purpose of achieving a ‘soft landing’ on the Moon’s south pole. However, it could not successfully touch down on the lunar surface and lost communication after reaching an altitude as close as 2.1 km.

Meanwhile, a senior ISRO scientist was quoted by a news agency ANI on Monday, saying, “If any factors appear to be unfavourable, then we will postpone the module’s landing on the Moon to August 27.”

 

Recent Moonquakes Near Chandrayaan’s Proposed Landing Site

ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 lander-rover-based mission is proposed to land in the plateau between two craters Manzinus and Boguslawsky and a third Simpelious in an area between 68 and 70° S and 31 and 33° E coordinates near the moon’s south pole.

Additionally, an alternate landing site has also been proposed in the west of Moretus crater (∼114 km diameter; coordinates: 70.6° S, 6.2° W), within an area between 68 and 70° S and 16 and 18° W.

At the mountainous south pole, the terrain is difficult and dangerous with major craters and extended lobate scarps which have remained in perpetual darkness for billions of years due to minimal sunlight, where temperatures can plummet below –300 degrees Fahrenheit. But it holds promise for unprecedented deep space scientific discoveries that includes humanity’s eternal search for water ice on the moon’s unexplored zone. Also, India’s 2008 mission, Chandrayaan-1, and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter observed the presence of billions of gallons of water ice on the surface of the Moon.

Besides, extremely cold temperatures in the south pole also infer communication challenges and indicate the fact that anything that’s found in this region would have remained frozen and preserved for millions of years.

Ice on the moon’s surface can act as a game-changer for future space exploration as it leads to water and boosts the scope of long-term lunar inhabitation and establishing lunar bases. It could also help astronauts produce oxygen and rocket fuel and aid in interplanetary space travel beyond the moon.

ILSA: ISRO’s Unique Payload

To study the measure of lunar ground acceleration and the tectonically active nature of its surface, the Chandrayaan-3 lander has a seismometer instrument for conducting Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) studies which can measure up to a range of 0.5 g over a bandwidth of 40 Hz due to shallow moonquakes.

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