Chandrayaan-3 Launch Delayed by 4 Seconds: What Went Wrong?

Chandrayaan-3 was launched from the ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre on July 14. The nominal lift-off had to be delayed by 4 seconds based on COLA analysis to avoid close approaches between a debris object and the injected satellites in their orbital phase, as stated by ISRO in a recent post. Throughout the moon mission, no concerning close approaches with other space objects were detected. ISRO released an ‘Indian Space Situational Assessment Report’ for the year 2023 which assesses the space environment, its future evolution, and hazards for safe and sustainable operations in outer space.

The report highlighted a growing trend in the space object population. It also outlined ISRO’s space object proximity analysis for satellites to predict close approaches by other space objects to Indian space assets. In the case of any critical close approach, collision avoidance maneuvers (CAM) are carried out to safeguard the operational spacecraft. India’s moon mission, Chandrayaan-3, consisting of the lunar lander module Vikram and rover Pragyaan, was launched on July 14 last year.

On August 23, 2023, India made history by becoming the first country to safely land a craft near the moon’s south pole region. The experiments were carried out for one lunar day, equivalent to 14 Earth days. With this achievement, India became the fourth country to master the technology of soft landing on the lunar surface, following the US, China, and the erstwhile Soviet Union.