Chandrayaan-3: Indian spacecraft's ‘failure-based design’ key to soft landing on moon. Here's how

livemint.com:

Chandrayaan-3 is poised for a soft landing on the moon's surface on August 23, an event that will be witnessed live by the entire nation across multiple platforms. ISRO Chairman S Somanath has earlier said Chandrayaan-3's ‘failure-based design’ is one of the key reasons to believe that it will not meet the same fate as its predecessor ‘Chandrayaan-2’.

Days ahead of the Chandrayaan-3 launch on July 14, the ISRO Chairman also stated that it is loaded with more fuel, a slew of safety measures, and a bigger landing site and has opted for a "failure-based design" to ensure that the rover successfully lands on the moon even if some things go wrong. “We looked at very many failures – sensor failure, engine failure, algorithm failure, calculation failure.

So, whatever the failure we want it to land at the required speed and rate. So, there are different failure scenarios calculated and programmed inside," Somanath had told PTI.

For the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, the landing area has been expanded to 4km x 2.5km to give it a bigger area for landing on the moon if things go haywire, said ISRO Chairman, adding that the Indian spacecraft will not make calculations to find the landing spot. Chandrayaan-3's journey began a month and six days ago when it was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on July 14.