India’s ambitious third moon mission, Chandrayaan-3 was successfully inserted into the lunar orbit on Saturday, the ISRO said. The required manoeuvre was done from an ISRO facility here, the city-headquartered space agency said in a tweet.
“Chandrayaan-3 has been successfully inserted into the lunar orbit. A retro-burning at the Perilune was commanded from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX), ISTRAC (ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network), Bengaluru,” the agency said in a tweet.
Perilune is the spacecraft’s closest point to the moon. The next operation – reduction of orbit– will be done at 11 PM on Sunday, ISRO added. ISRO also shared a message from the satellite to its centres, which read, “MOX, ISTRAC, this is Chandrayaan-3. I am feeling lunar gravity.”
Over five moves in the three weeks since the launch on July 14, ISRO has been lifting the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft into orbits farther and farther away from the Earth.
Then, on August 1 in a key manoeuvre—a slingshot move—the craft was sent successfully towards the Moon from Earth’s orbit. Following this trans-lunar injection, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft escaped from orbiting the Earth and began following a path that would take it to the vicinity of the moon.
