Chandrayaan 3 begins orbit circularisation phase

Chandrayaan 3, India’s moon mission took flight on July 14 with the aim to make a smooth landing on the Lunar surface. It's the third mission by ISRO to study the moon and the ongoing mission is built with the learnings from the previous failed mission. Till now the spacecraft is going strong and has successfully entered the moon’s orbit. The landing date is expected to be on August 24. Check recent updates on Chandrayaan 3 and how close the spacecraft is to the moon’s surface.

Chandrayaan 3 updates

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is closely monitoring the spacecraft. It is slowly getting closer to the moon's surface as on August 1, the spacecraft entered the translunar orbit. On August 5, Chandrayaan 3 entered the lunar orbit and since then it moved forward gradually and reduced the orbit with a series of manoeuvres.

Earlier, on August 9, ISRO reported that the craft is close to the moon’s surface by 174 km x 1437 km. Today, August 14, it was planned to conduct another manoeuvre reduction between 11:30 am and 12:30 pm IST. The operation was successfully completed and the spacecraft is even closer now. According to a Mint report, the national space agency announced that the spacecraft has now achieved a "near-circular orbit" around the moon.

Now, another orbit reduction is planned for August 16 around 8:30 am. With each major manoeuvre, the spacecraft is getting closer to the moon and is all set to make history soon.

However, Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft, which had taken flight on August 11, is on the way to land on the moon on the same day as Chandrayaan 3. There were no complications reported so far on the landing of both spacecraft. Chandrayaan 3 mission is to stay on the moon for 1 lunar day (14 Earth days) and Luna-25 will study the moon for a whole year.