India is on its way to returning to the moon after a rocket took off from Sriharikota, a launch site on the country’s East Coast, on Friday afternoon local time.
The mission, Chandrayaan-3, was largely a do-over after the country’s first attempt to put a robotic spacecraft on the surface of the moon nearly four years ago ended in a crater and a crater.
Chandrayaan-3 comes amid renewed interest in lunar exploration. The United States and China both intend to send astronauts there in the coming years, and half a dozen robotic missions from Russia, Japan and the United States could go there this year and next.
If the robotic lander and rover on board Chandrayaan-3 succeeds in landing without stopping, that will be an achievement that no country other than China has achieved this century, adding to the national pride achieved by India of his homegrown space program. A cadre of commercial space startups is also popping up in India.
Last month, India agreed with the United States to send a joint mission to the International Space Station next year. The Indian Space Research Organization – India’s equivalent of NASA – is also developing its own spacecraft to carry astronauts into orbit.
On Friday, at 2:35 p.m. local time (5:05 a.m. Eastern time), a rocket called the Launch Vehicle Mark III took off from an Indian space base on an island north of metropolis of Chennai.
As crowds waving Indian flags and colorful umbrellas cheered, the rocket rose into the sky. Sixteen minutes later, the spacecraft separated from the rocket’s upper stage, and a round of cheers and applause erupted in the mission control center.
“This is indeed a moment of glory for India,” Jitendra Singh, the minister of state for India’s Ministry of Science and Technology, said in remarks after the launch, “and a moment of destiny for all of us. here in Sriharikota part of history in the making.”
In the coming weeks, the spacecraft will perform a series of engine firings to extend its orbit before heading to the moon. A landing attempt is scheduled to take place on August 23 or 24, which is timed to coincide with sunrise at the landing site in the south polar region of the moon.
Landing on the moon in one piece is difficult, and many space programs have failed.
Chandrayaan means “moon craft” in Hindi. Chandrayaan-1, an orbiter, was launched in 2008, and the mission lasted less than a year. The Chandrayaan-2 mission was successfully lifted off on July 22, 2019, and the spacecraft successfully entered orbit around the moon.
The landing attempt, on Sept. 6, 2019, appeared to be going well until the lander was about 1.3 miles above the surface, when its path diverged from its planned path.
The problems arose because one of the lander’s five engines had a slightly higher thrust than expected, S. Somanath, the chairman of the Indian space agency, said during a news conference a few days ago.
The spacecraft tried to correct, but the software set limits on how fast it could turn. And because of the higher thrust, the craft is quite a distance from its destination even as it approaches the ground.
“The craft is trying to get there by increasing the speed to get there, while it doesn’t have enough time to,” Mr. Somanath said.
Months later, an amateur internet sleuth used images from NASA spacecraft to locate the crash site, where the debris of the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover sit to this day.
The Chandrayaan-2 orbiter continues to orbit the moon, where its instruments are used for scientific studies. Because of that, the Chandrayaan-3 mission will have a simpler propulsion module that will push a lander and a rover out of Earth’s orbit and then allow it to enter orbit around the moon.
Although the lander’s design is largely the same, changes include stronger landing legs, more propellant, more solar cells to gather energy from the sun and better sensors to measure altitude.
The software was also modified so that the spacecraft could go faster when needed, and the allowed landing area was expanded.
When they reach the moon, the lander and the rover will use different instruments to make thermal, seismic and mineralogical measurements in the area.
The mission is to end two weeks after landing when the sun sets on the solar-powered lander and rover. If something happens while Chandrayaan-3 is in orbit around the moon, the landing could be delayed by a month until the next sunrise, in September, so that the spacecraft can spend a full two weeks operating on the surface.
While scientists will benefit from the lunar data collected by Chandrayaan-3, India, like other countries, is also exploring the solar system out of national pride.
When the country’s Mangalyaan spacecraft entered orbit around Mars in 2014, children across India were asked to arrive at school at 6:45 a.m., before the usual start time, to to watch the event on state television.
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, was at the mission control center in Bengaluru and hailed the Mars mission “as a shining symbol of what we can do as a nation.”
For the failed attempt to land Chandrayaan-2, Mr. Modi was at the space center again, but his address afterwards was more subdued. “We are getting close, but we have to cover a lot of ground in the coming times,” he told the scientists, engineers and staff.
Later in his speech, Mr. Modi added: “Just as important as the end result is the journey and effort. I can proudly say that the effort was worth it and so was the journey.” He was later seen hugging and consoling K. Sivan, who was the former ISRO chief.
On Friday, the mood in the mission control room was upbeat after the spacecraft’s successful journey into orbit was confirmed. Optimism about Chandrayaan-3 also permeated some Indian space enthusiasts who traveled to see the launch in person.
Neeraj Ladia, 35, the chief executive of Space Arcade, an astronomy equipment maker, was parked among 100 cars watching the launch five miles from ISRO’s campus in Sriharikota.
“This time it’s going to be a soft landing, for sure,” he said, referring to putting the moon in one piece. He added, “So the mood is very positive this time.”
Apart from Chandrayaan-3, the Indian space agency has other plans in the works. It developed a spacecraft, Gaganyaan, for carrying astronauts to orbit, but it fell behind the original goal of a crewed flight in 2022, and the mission is now expected not earlier than 2025.
India is increasing its collaboration with the United States for space missions. Earlier this year, the White House announced that NASA will provide training for Indian astronauts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston “with the goal of increasing the joint effort on the International Space Station by 2024.”
India has also signed the Artemis Accords, an American framework that sets general guidelines for civil space exploration. The agreements reinforce the view of the United States that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty allows countries to use resources such as minerals and ice mined on asteroids, the moon, Mars and anywhere in the solar system.
Another collaboration is the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission, or NISAR, which will use advanced radar to precisely track changes in Earth’s land and ice. The satellite is scheduled to be launched from India in 2024. India also has ambitions for missions to study the sun and Venus.
More moon missions will be right on India’s heels. Russia plans to launch Luna 25 on August, the latest in a long line of robotic missions to the moon. But it was a long time ago: Luna 24 took place in August 1976, before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Also scheduled to land in August is the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, from the Japanese space agency JAXA.
Three NASA-funded missions are also on the way as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program — missions put together by private companies to bring NASA instruments to the moon. Houston’s Intuitive Machines has scheduled the first CLPS mission not earlier than the third quarter of this year, heading to the south polar region.
Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology has a lander ready but waiting for its ride — a new rocket built by United Launch Alliance called Vulcan, which isn’t ready to fly yet.
A second Intuitive Machines mission is also targeted for the fourth quarter of this year, but that will likely slide into next year.
There was an attempt to land on the moon this year, in April, by the Japanese company Ispace. But the spacecraft crashed when its navigation system got confused.
