India’s third mission to the moon, Chandrayaan 3 will take off on Friday at 2:35 pm. The mission aims at achieving what its predecessor could not — land softly on the lunar surface and explore it with a rover. On this development, Dr Ramesh Kapoor, astrophysicist and a former professor at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, spoke about the mission and the journey of ISRO. Excerpts from the interview.
Q What is the significance of this launching of Chandrayaan 3?
This is a very important step in various kinds of programmes of ISRO not just for the science missions, but for other missions as well. Chnadrayaan has held a very important place in our hearts and brains because the moon is one place where people really want to go. People were expecting that India will also one day land its gadgets there and that someday Indian astronauts would also land on the surface of the moon. Then the Chandrayaan 2 also went up in 2019 and unfortunately, there was a failure in the matter of the lending of the lender and its Rover. So that was quite disappointing. But, ISRO did not lose heart, there was great support from the Government of India and then they went ahead and planned for Chandrayaan 3 in October 2019.
In between there was this Corona period as well. And this went on at some slow pace. But finally, ISRO was able to redesign its slender and Rover, which is more sturdy and it can phase at an even greater speed of fall on the surface of the moon.
Q What does this mission mean for India and its space sector?
ISRO has been one of the biggest and most trusted space agencies in the world and ranks fifth only after NASA, European Space Agency, China's and Canadian space agencies and then we have our ISRO. It has worked out for several years since its inception to achieve this. The real success started when it started delivering and the first successful flight of a polar satellite vehicle in 1994. Beginning in 1999, ISRO started thinking of geostationary satellite launch vehicles (GSLV).
GSLV is a big and very powerful rocket and ISRO's most powerful rocket that is going to send a lander and rover to the moon this time. Earlier, few technologies were declined to us by the international community in the wake of the nuclear tests of 1998. With this vast knowledge and tremendous growth, different space agencies from many different countries would want to collaborate with ISRO and thus create a big space sector for start-ups which are already there and opening private sectors.
Q Just to put this in context, India is now showcasing that it can attempt to successfully carry out a soft landing on the surface, how important is this for India after India failed last time in 2019?
It's the most important thing. It's not just leaving something in space. The escape velocity of earth is 11.2 km per second and if you can send something with this speed vertically up, it will leave the earth forever. On the Moon, it is six times less. Now, if you are sending something to drop on the moon's surface, with a speed of about 2 km per second, that is dangerous for anything. So, our purpose is to send their instruments that work. So, at this speed of 2 km per second, these instruments when they fall on the moon will not break. Fast landing is a very complicated matter and it needs a lot of calculations.
In the orbital, there is a high-resolution camera. It has taken the entire moon pictures at high resolution, like 30-centimetre resolution. And this image is fully available here. Using that image, now we are able to understand, which is a better place to land and we have widened the landing area. This is a big advantage of having Chandrayaan-2. There were so many instruments on board the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, and all of them are working properly. It has done remote sensing images of the moon and found a lot of new scientific findings. We've learned a lot of things during the failure of the 2019 landing and we've learnt from it.
See, in space work, we know that we are not controlling anything. We are planning and loading everything on board, expecting certain nominal things to happen. But things can also go wrong or could give unprecedented results but we do not stop, we have to keep working in this sector.
Q What interesting things can we expect from this mission?
Moon's body has been hit by meteoroids for the past four billion years. South Pole interests because there is a likelihood of water, which will be usable for future habitation. This makes it an interesting location for studying water resources and their implications for future human missions. But, the Exploration of the South Pole is challenging due to its rugged and treacherous terrain and challenging conditions.
