"Nothing should go wrong": Ex-ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair issues warning ahead of Chandrayaan-3 launch

Veteran space scientist G Madhavan Nair said on Thursday the Chandrayaan-3 mission to the moon should succeed in all respects so that India can cross a major milestone in space exploration, and described the planned soft landing on the lunar surface as a very difficult and complex maneuver. Speaking to PTI, the former Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, said the mission is an important milestone for ISRO, and noted that the national space agency had made a number of simulations and strengthened the systems to resolve the problem faced during Chandrayaan-2 lander's soft- landing, which was unsuccessful, nearly four years ago.
"This moment I can only say that this mission should succeed in all respects so that we will cross a major milestone in space exploration", said Nair, under whose six year tenure as ISRO Chairman and Secretary in the Department of Space from 2003, as many as 25 successful missions were accomplished. On the soft-landing which the ISRO planned to attempt on August 23 or 24, he said "It's a very difficult maneuver, very very complex maneuver and we are doing it for the first time in an unknown territory and to that extent there is lot of anxiety, we have to wait and see. "Nair also had a word of caution ahead of the launch of the Chandrayaan-3 mission on Friday. "Normally nothing should go wrong. In this game, we can't say. It's a big event with so many sub-systems and components working in unison. Even if a minor glitch happens anywhere we can get into a problem, we really have to be cautious," he said. "Right now, pre-launch preparations are going on. I hope they will look at all aspects carefully and don't brush aside any anomaly if at all they come across."

India’s third mission to the moon will take off on Friday at 2:35 pm. The mission aims to achieve what its predecessor could not — land softly on the lunar surface and explore it with a rover.A successful soft landing will make India the fourth country, after the United States, Russia, and China, to achieve the feat. The position remains vacant after the missions from Israel and India in 2019 crash-landed and the spacecraft carrying a lander-rover from Japan and a rover from UAE failed in 2022.While the objectives of the mission remain the same, scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) have learnt from the previous mission. The lander’s design was improved after a series of tests to see how it performs under various circumstances, such as inability to reach the landing spot, failure of electronics or sensors, velocity being higher than needed, among others. After launching into an orbit around the Earth at an altitude of 179 km on Friday, the spacecraft will gradually increase its orbit in a series of manoeuvres to escape the Earth’s gravity and slingshot towards the moon. After reaching close to the moon, the spacecraft will need to be captured by its gravity. Once that happens, another series of manoeuvres will reduce the orbit of the spacecraft to a 100×100 km circular one. Thereafter, the lander, which carries the rover inside it, will separate from the propulsion module and start its powered descent. This whole process is likely to take around 42 days, with the landing slated for August 23 at the lunar dawn. Lunar days and nights last for 14 earth days. The lander and rover are built to last only one lunar day — they can’t survive the extreme drop in temperatures during lunar nights — and hence have to land right at dawn.