Bangalore- Vikram, the lander of India’s third lunar mission Chandrayaan-3, will be able to make a soft-landing on the Moon’s surface on August 23 even if all the sensors and two of its engines do not work, ISRO Chairman S Somanath said on Tuesday. The entire design of the lander ‘Vikram’ has been made in a manner that makes sure that it would be able to handle failures, Somanath said during a talk on ‘Chandrayaan-3: Bharat’s Pride Space Mission’, hosted by the non-profit organization Disha Bharat.“If everything fails, if all the sensors fail, nothing works, still it (Vikram) will make a landing. That’s how it has been designed — provided that the propulsion system works well,” Somanath said.
Chandrayaan-3 blasted into Space on July 14 and it entered into lunar orbit on August 5. There will be three more de-orbiting manoeuvres — exercises to bring it closer to the Moon so that Vikram lands on the Moon’s surface on August 23. These de-orbiting manoeuvres will be performed on August 9, August 14, and August 16 till its orbit reduces to 100 kmx100 km from the Moon, Somanath said.
A lander propulsion module separation exercise will be taken up subsequently, soon after lander “deboost”, a process that slows down the craft. It will be followed by landing on lunar surface on August 23, he explained. “We have also made sure that if two of the engines (in Vikram) don’t work this time also, it will still be able to land,” the ISRO chairman said.“So the whole design has been made to make sure that it (Vikram) should be able to handle many failures, provided the algorithms work properly,” he added.
The biggest challenge before the ISRO team, according to him, is to make a horizontal ‘Vikram’ land vertically on the lunar surface. Somanath said once the lander separates from the orbiter, it will move horizontally. Through a series of manoeuvres, it will be brought to a vertical stance in order to land safely on the Moon.
This exercise is crucial, as ISRO failed to get its lander to touchdown safely on the Moon’s surface during the Chandrayaan-2 mission.“The ability to transfer from horizontal to vertical direction is the trick we have to play here. Here only we had the problem last time,” Somanath pointed out. The challenge is also to make sure that the fuel consumed is lesser, the distance calculations are correct and all the algorithms work properly, the ISRO chief said.
