As the country waits with bated breath for the forthcoming historic lunar landing, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Monday released fresh images of the lunar far side area on the moon, as captured by the spacecraft. The images taken by the spacecraft's Vikram lander reveals the potential safe landing area as well.
"Here are the images of Lunar far side area captured by the Lander Hazard Detection and Avoidance Camera (LHDAC). This camera that assists in locating a safe landing area -- without boulders or deep trenches -- during the descent is developed at SAC/ISRO," ISRO said on X.
The Lander Module (LM) is expected to touch the Moon's south polar region at 6:04 pm on Wednesday.
On Sunday, the LM successfully underwent the final deboosting closing in on moon.
ISRO had said that it has successfully reduced the orbit of the Chandrayaan-3 mission's LM to 25 km x 134 km, further bringing it closer to the moon.
Chandrayaan-3 entered the lunar orbit on August 5. Orbit reduction manoeuvres were carried out on August 6,9, 14 and 16. The crucial and significant separation of the Lander Module from the propulsion module took place on August 17.
The mission objectives of Chandrayaan-3 are to demostrate a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, to demonstrate rover roving on the moon and also to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.
With Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed on the Moon on Sunday, all eyes are on the crucial landing of Chandrayaan-3.
“On August 19, in accordance with the Luna-25 flight programme, an impulse was provided to form its pre-landing elliptical orbit. At about 14:57 Moscow time, communication with the Luna-25 apparatus was interrupted. The measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and get in contact with it did not produce any results,” Roscosmos State Space Corporation said on its official Telegram channel.
The space agency launched a probe to analyse the causes of the crash.
With the success of Chandrayaan-3, India will join the Soviet Union, the US and China, the countries that managed to make successful moon landings.