The Indian Space Research Organization has disclosed that Chandrayaan-3’s lift-off had to be postponed by four seconds in order to prevent any potential collision with satellites and space debris.
“For LVM3-M4/ Chandrayaan-3, the nominal lift-off had to be delayed by 4 seconds based on COLA analysis to avoid close approaches between a debris object and the injected satellites in their orbital phase due to overlapping operational altitudes,” ISRO stated in an earlier post.
The space agency announced that there had been no frighteningly close encounters with other space objects during the country’s moon mission.
An ‘Indian Space Situational Assessment Report’ for 2023 was made available by ISRO on Friday. It evaluates the space environment, its potential changes in the future, and the risks associated with safe and sustainable space operations. A close-range evaluation of satellites and launch vehicles is part of the space situational activities.
Additionally, it brought attention to a trend that is growing in the population of space objects, indicating improved accessibility to space and the widening range of uses for space technology.
The report also outlined ISRO’s space object proximity analysis for satellites to predict close approaches by other space objects to Indian space assets. “In case of any critical close approach, collision avoidance manoeuvres (CAM) are carried out to safeguard the operational spacecraft,” ISRO said.
India’s moon mission, Chandrayaan-3, with lunar lander module Vikram and rover Pragyaan was launched from the ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on July 14 last year.
On August 23, 2023, India scripted history be becoming the first country to safely land a craft near the moon’s south pole region. The experiments were carried out for one lunar day which is equivalent to 14 Earth days.
With the touchdown, India became the fourth country to master the technology of soft landing on the lunar surface after the US, China and the erstwhile Soviet Union.
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