Chandrayaan-3 Moon Landing: Why is it taking 3 days to cover a distance of 25 km? How does ISRO control gravity?

Chandrayaan-3 Moon Landing: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) completed the second and final deboosting operation at 1.50 am on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday. After this operation, the minimum distance of the lander from the Moon is 25 km and the maximum distance is 134 km. Today i.e. on Wednesday, August 23, Chandrayaan-3 will land on the Moon's South Pole at 06:04 PM. So, Chandrayaan-3 is taking three days to cover the distance of just 25 kms. Do you know what is the reason for this? 

Vikram had to wait for landing

In fact, after the final deboosting, ISRO had told on X (Twitter) that now Vikram Lander would have to undergo an internal check and wait for sunrise at the designated landing site.

Chandrayaan-3 will be landed on the moon only after sunlight, so it has to wait for that moment.

This is the reason why Chandrayaan-3 is taking three days to cover the distance of 25kms.

If everything goes well, the landing will be done today itself, on 23rd August.

But if any kind of disturbance is found, then the landing can be postponed for the next few days.

ISRO has prepared a backup plan for landing and has reserved a new date for landing.

Nilesh M Desai, director of Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre, says that the final decision will be taken on August 23, just two hours before Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled to land on the lunar surface.

He said the decision would be taken on the basis of the health of the lander module, the position of the moon, and telemetry data at that time.

If any problem is found, the landing can be postponed to August 27.

How does ISRO control gravity?

It takes four days to a week for a NASA vehicle to reach on the moon. But why is it taking so long for ISRO to deliver its vehicle.

The reason for this is that ISRO does not have powerful rockets like NASA, which can take Chandrayaan-3 directly to the lunar orbit.

For this reason, ISRO takes advantage of the speed and gravity of the earth.

In simple words, understand it like this - the way when you get down from a slow moving bus or train, you get down in its direction.

In such a situation, the risk of falling is very less.

In the same way, by keeping pace with its speed in the direction of the earth, the gravity pull is reduced by circling around it.

In such a situation, the risk of rocket or spacecraft falling on Earth is less.

Whereas if you send the rocket directly towards the space, then the gravitational power of Earth will pull you faster.

The earth rotates on its axis at a speed of about 1,600 kilometers per hour.

The rocket or spacecraft get the benefit of it.

It revolves around earth and changes its orbit again and again.

It takes time to change these classes.

Chandrayaan-3 first made 5 rounds of earth, then traveled in a long distance lunar transit orbit.

After this, Chandrayaan 3's orbit paths around the moon were changed.

This whole process takes a long time.

But the process of sending the spacecraft into deep space by rotating it around earth is less expensive.

This is the reason why ISRO's projects are much cheaper than NASA's.