Chandrayaan-3 touchdown on August 23: Which different missions are already lively on Moon?

Chandrayaan-3 goals to aim a comfortable touchdown on the lunar floor on August 23. Coinciding with this, Russia’s current moon mission, Luna 25, additionally anticipates its landing throughout the identical time. However, the moon is already bustling with numerous ongoing missions, starting from orbiters to landers and rovers.

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An overview of lively lunar exploration missions:

As of July 2023, six lunar orbiters stay operational, in accordance with Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO.

(i) The National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA THEMIS mission’s two probes, now often known as Artemis P1 and Artemis P2, have been repurposed underneath the Artemis initiative, sustaining eccentric orbits of low inclination.

(ii) NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) traces an almost polar, barely elliptical path across the moon.

(iii) ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 and Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) each navigate polar orbits at an altitude of 100 km.

(iv) NASA’s Capstone follows a 9:2 resonant southern L2 NRHO trajectory, flying over the lunar North pole at an altitude of 1500-1600 km and the South pole at roughly 70,000 km away.

Spacecraft Ouna from Japan’s Kaguya/SELENE mission in 2009 and India’s Chandrayaan-1 launched in 2008 are not practical.

All the opposite orbiters have been both moved out of the moon-bound orbital regime or have landed/impacted the lunar floor, both intentionally or on account of failure to land softly. China’s Queqiao, a knowledge relay satellite tv for pc for the Chang’e 4 mission, shifted to a halo orbit close to the Earth-Moon L2 level after its launch in 2018.

Lander on the lunar floor

Presently, China’s Yutu-2 rover, dispatched by Chang’e 4, stands as the only real working rover on the lunar floor, actively exploring the far aspect of the moon.

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With so many missions, is not there’s hazard of collision?

In the Moon’s orbit, there are a number of spacecraft, as proven above, which generally come very shut to one another on account of their overlapping paths. This may even result in conditions the place they may collide, so collision avoidance manoeuvres are taken to keep away from this uncertainty, says ISRO. The Indian house company informs that Chandrayaan-2 has made three collision avoidance strikes to stop shut encounters with LRO and KPLO.

“Effective coordination is taking place among the agencies to avoid critical conjunctions in the Lunar orbit. For the Chandryaan-3 mission, the propulsion module is expected to orbit around the moon in a circular LLO of about 150 km altitude for many years to come,” ISRO mentioned in an announcement.

Chandrayaan-3 tracker: What is the present standing of the Indian moon mission?

Chandrayaan-3 has reached even nearer to the moon’s floor. The spacecraft’s orbit is diminished to 174 km x 1437 km following a manoeuvre carried out on Wednesday.

According to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the following operation is scheduled for August 14, 2023, between 11:30 and 12:30 Hrs. IST.