Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander undergoes first successful deboosting

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander on Friday successfully underwent its first deboosting manoeuvre, said Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The authorities asserted that the lander module's health was normal. «LM successfully underwent a deboosting operation that reduced its orbit to 113 km x 157 km,» said ISRO in a X (formerly Twitter) post.

Deboosting is the process of slowing down to position itself in an orbit where the orbit's closest point to the Moon (Perilune) is 30 km and the farthest point (the Apolune) is 100 km. The second deboosting operation is scheduled for August 20, 2023, around 2 am. The lander was successfully separated from the propulsion module or the mother aircraft on August 17, 2023.

The lander has been named after Vikram Sarabhai (1919-1971), who is widely regarded as the father of the Indian space programme. On Wednesday, the spacecraft carried out the final lunar-bound orbit reduction manoeuvre of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, a week ahead of its scheduled landing on the south pole of the moon on August 23. A GSLV Mark 3 (LVM 3) heavy-lift launch vehicle was used for the launch of the spacecraft that was placed in the lunar orbit on August 5 and since then it has been through a series of orbital manoeuvres.

It has been a month and three days since the Indian Space Research Organisation launched the Chandrayaan-3 mission on July 14. The spacecraft was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh's Sriharikota. ISRO is bidding to make a successful soft landing on the moon, which will make India the fourth country in the world to achieve the feat after the United States, Russia, and China.