Chandrayaan 3-All you need to know| Essay by Atreyo,12, Kolkata

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has three lunar missions planned: Chandrayaan 3 and Apollo 8. It is the replacement for Chandrayaan 2, which experienced a technical malfunction and was unable to accomplish a soft landing. 

Only a lander named Vikram Lander and a rover are present in Chandrayaan 3. With the assistance of the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter, it transmits messages to Earth. The mission’s goal is to showcase India’s skill at soft landing on a star body.

Many instruments make up Chandrayaan 3’s components, and these instruments collectively are referred to as payloads. The payloads on board the lander were as follows: – 

The rover will contain the following payloads: – 

1. An Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) will tell us about the chemical and mineralogical composition of the surface of the moon.
2. Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) will determine the elemental composition (Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Ti, and Fe) of the lunar soil around the place where the rover will land.

The propulsion module will contain the following payloads: –

•  Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) will study spectral and polarimetric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit.

After the Vikram lander landed on the lunar surface, it deployed the Pragyan Rover to explore the southern side of the moon. The Pragyan rover used its integrated cameras to send videos of the environmental conditions on the moon and started conducting the experiments it would be doing during the two-week stay.

Chandrayaan 3 was expected to conduct experiments during only one lunar daylight period, as during the lunar nightfall period the temperature of the southern side of the moon will be as low as -1300 °C, which can fully damage the instruments.

 So, the rover and the lander are both put into sleep mode, and if the rover and lander survive the whole lunar night, the planned mission can be extended further. 

But even if they don’t, that won’t be a problem, as they have completed all the experiments that ISRO was planning to conduct during the stay.

While conducting the experiments, ISRO’s Vikram Lander and Rover made some astounding discoveries. Some of them are: 

• Detection of Elements: With the help of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), the rover has detected many chemicals on the surface of the moon.
• The rover has discovered sulphur (S), aluminium (Al), calcium (Ca), iron (Fe), chromium (Cr), titanium (Ti), manganese (Mn), silicon (Si), and oxygen (O), as shown by the graph next to it. contains significant concentrations of titanium, iron, sulphur, and chromium.
• To make sure the data provided by the APXS was accurate, a second payload carried out the identical task using a different technique. The LIBS (Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy) device focuses on a particular spot in the soil using its built-in lasers. Subsequently, the area becomes heated by the laser, transforming it into plasma, the fourth state of matter. Ions make up plasma, just like in the other three states of matter, and it emits light.
•  Thus, light is released by the cooling soil, which LIBS’s sensors pick up on. The LIBS equipment then analyses the data using its spectrometer to determine which elements are in the soil.
• In the contrast the APXS instrument uses alpha particles such as protons and focuses it on a specific point. The charged alpha particle collides with an atom’s inner shell electron. The outer shell electrons then release their extra energy in the form of x-rays, which are then absorbed by the sensors, to fill the space occupied by the ejected electron. The fact that the x-ray emission varies depending on the element is an important one.
  
• Temperature variation: While the instrument When ChaSTE measured the lunar soil’s temperature, it observed a stark variation in temperature. Only a few millimetres below the surface, the temperature plunged to -100 °C from the near 500 °C surface temperature. This demonstrates how the components in topsoil function as thermal insulators. According to the earlier discoveries, thermal insulators include calcium sulphate (CaSO4), titanium, and sulphur.
• Seismic activity: The ILSA payload on the lander provided vibration measurements of the rover’s movement.
•  This grand and successful mission was done under the guidance of—

• ISRO Chairperson: S. Somanath
• Mission Director: S. Mohanakumar
• Associate Mission Director: G. Narayanan
• Project Director: P. Veeramuthuvel
• Deputy Project Director: Kalpana Kalahasti
• Vehicle Director: Biju C. Thomas

Every Indian feels proud now that the Chandrayaan 3 mission has been successful. In Thumba, a small fishing town in Kerala, Vikram Sarabhai, who had recently learnt how to construct sounding rockets, founded the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is currently recognised as the first organisation in history to have successfully completed a soft landing of a spacecraft in the moon’s southern region.

 Vikram Sarabhai’s lofty ambitions have now been realised, and we hope that the Indian Space Programme continues to achieve amazing accomplishments that will make Indians proud of our BHARAT.

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