Chandrayaan-3: Moon Explorer Mission That Was Postponed Due To Potential Collision In Orbit

Chandrayaan-3's appearance on the moon before hibernation forever (photo: dock. ISRO)

JAKARTA The 74th International Astronautical Congress was held recently in Baku, Azerbaijan. At the event, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) told about the problem of launching theChandrayan-3 on July 14.

Represented by the Head of General Manager of Safe and Sustainable Space Operations, ISROAnil Kumar, Chandrayaan-3 had experienced a delay in launch even though it was only a few seconds.

Kumar said that ISRO had analyzed orbits before launching Chandrayaan-3. After seeing the potential for collisions with other objects, they postponed the launch for four seconds.

Before the launch, the takeoff must be cleared. The number of orbiting space objects, especially low-Earth orbit, is numerous. The US Space Force is tracking and cataloging more than 30,000 objects with a size of more than 10 centimeters, "explained Kumar, quoted fromSpacenews.

Not only ISRO, the entire space agency needs to carry out orbital analysis every time it launches a spacecraft. This is a serious problem because active objects and garbage in space are piling up and making orbit even more dense.

Despite the problem, ISRO managed to launch Chandrayaan-3 with the Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3). India's success did not stop there because Chandrayaan-3 had landed on the Moon on August 23.

With this landing, India became the fourth country to land a rover on the Moon, following the Soviet Union, the United States (US), and China. After carrying out its mission, Chandrayaan-3 has been hiberning since last September 3.

After doing a long hibernation, Chandrayaan-3 should have been successfully awakened, but ISRO failed to wake this rover. Signs of his life were not found until now.

Although Chandrayaan-3 is said to have no hope of waking up, this rover has at least succeeded in adding new research materials for scientists, namely the discovery of sulfur and other chemical elements at the south pole of the moon.