ISRO brings back Chandrayaan-3 Propulsion Module to Earth’s orbit

In a groundbreaking achievement, ISRO has successfully returned the Propulsion Module (PM) of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which was initially intended for lunar operations, into the Earth’s orbit after surpassing its lunar mission objectives.

Following the lunar hop by Vikram (lander), this was another accomplishment that shows that ISRO can restart engines on the moon and operate equipment, both of which were not foreseen, the national space agency stated in a release.

“In another unique experiment, like the hop experiment on the Vikram Lander, the Propulsion Module (PM) of Chandrayaan-3 was moved from an orbit around the Moon to an orbit around Earth,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) stated in its official release.

The preliminary goal of India’s first successful lunar landing mission was to establish a soft landing near the lunar south polar region and conduct experimentations using the tools onboard the lander ‘Vikram’ and rover ‘Pragyaan’.

The spacecraft was launched on July 14, 2023, on board the LVM3-M4 vehicle from SDSC, SHAR.

It made its touchdown on the surface of the moon on Aug 23, after which it was deployed to survey the unexplored lunar south pole.

“With regard to the Propulsion Module, the main objective was to ferry the Lander module from GTO to the final lunar polar circular orbit and separate the Lander. Subsequent to separation, spectro-polarimetry of the HABITABLE Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload in the PM was also operated,” the agency informed further.

Initially, the space agency had planned to operate this payload for nearly three months during the mission life of PM. However, it was later decided to utilize the remaining fuel in the Propulsion Module to derive additional information for the lunar missions to be carried out in the future.

“First maneuver was performed on October 9, 2023, to raise apolune altitude to 5112 km from 150 km thus, increasing the period of orbit from 2.1 hrs to 7.2 hrs. Later, considering the estimate of available propellant, the second manoeuvre plan was revised to target an Earth orbit of 1.8 lakhs x 3.8 lakhs km. The Trans-Earthinjection (TEI)maneuver was performed on October 13, 2023. In the post-TEI manoeuvre realized orbit, the propulsion module made four Moon fly-bys before departing Moon SOI on November 10,” ISRO said.

(With inputs from agencies)