The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has informed that Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled to enter the lunar orbit on 5 August, at around 7pm IST.

The Chandrayaan-3 was launched on 14 July from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. Over five moves in the three weeks since, ISRO has been lifting the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft into orbits farther and farther away from Earth.

Then, on August 1 in a key manoeuvre — a slingshot move — the craft was sent successfully towards the Moon from Earth’s orbit. On 1 August ISRO had informed that the health of India’s third lunar mission Chandrayaan-3 is normal – hours after it completed its orbits around the Earth and moved closer to the Moon.

Following this trans-lunar injection, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft escaped from orbiting the Earth and began following a path that would take it to the vicinity of the moon.

The Lunar Orbit Injection (LOI) is set for around 7 pm on 5 August, the Bengaluru-headquartered national space agency said on Friday.

The manoeuvre will be performed at point when Chandrayaan-3’s orbit is closest to the Moon, ISRO said. The space agency earlier said that the health of the spacecraft is normal and a soft-landing on the lunar surface would be attempted on August 23.

Meanwhile, ISRO has lined up a series of activities over the next few months as it gears up for “exciting” missions including a GSLV launch this year, Chairman S Somanath said.

Somanath said: “We are going to come back with another PSLV mission soon in the month of August or early September.”

According to ISRO, the Gaganyaan project envisages demonstration of human spaceflight capability by launching a crew of three members to an orbit of 400 kilometres for a three-day mission and bringing them back safely to Earth, by landing in Indian sea waters.

Updated: 05 Aug 2023, 05:43 PM IST