SMALL BUDGET, GRAND VISION

From planning to execution, Chandrayaan-3 has been all about making the most of available resources

- PALLAVA BAGLA

Chandrayaan-3 is all about doing more with less. When a country has limited capabilities but dreams big, it has to be smart to use the love and gravity of Mother Earth to go all the way to the moon.

Chandrayaan-3 is a three-in-one satellite launched by India’s most reliable and trustworthy launcher, Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3), a humongous but elegant rocket that weighs 642 tonnes, or the equivalent of 130 full-grown Asian elephants. At 43.5m, it is roughly half as tall as the Qutb Minar. The Chandrayaan-3 launch on July 14 was the homegrown rocket’s seventh consecutive successful flight.

LVM-3 may be a bahubali, but it still lacked the punch to send the 3,921kg Chandrayaan-3 satellite on a direct flight to the moon. ISRO engineers devised a way to overcome this big problem—use the earth’s gravity to slingshot Chandrayaan-3 to the moon. Using the spacecraft’s propulsion module, the scientists gradually kept raising its orbit and velocity. On August 1, Chandrayaan-3 attained enough ‘escape velocity’ to leave Mother Earth’s loving hold and go on its solitary journey of 3.84 lakh kilometres to the moon. The marathon was completed and the satellite entered the moon’s orbit on August 5.

“This was a very, very tricky operation requiring great precision, since the approach velocity had to be just right,” said S. Somanath, ISRO chairman. “If it were too fast, the satellite would have bounced off and become a flyby mission. If it were too slow, it could have been pulled in and crash-landed on the lunar surface. The optimal velocity ensured that Chandrayaan-3 was pulled into orbit and began its dance around the moon.”