he soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 involved four phases:
- Rough braking phase: This phase began at an altitude of 30 kilometers above the lunar surface. The lander’s velocity was reduced from 1.68 kilometers per second to 700 meters per second.
- Attitude hold phase: This phase began at an altitude of 7.42 kilometers above the lunar surface. The lander’s orientation was changed from horizontal to vertical.
- Fine braking phase: This phase began at an altitude of 800 meters above the lunar surface. The lander’s velocity was further reduced to 0 meters per second.
- Terminal descent phase: This phase began at an altitude of 100 meters above the lunar surface. The lander touched down on the lunar surface.
The entire soft landing process took about 15 minutes. The success of the soft landing was critical to the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
Here are some of the challenges involved in the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3:
- The lunar surface is very uneven, with large craters and mountains.
- The lunar gravity is one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, which makes it difficult to control the lander’s descent.
- The lunar atmosphere is very thin, which means that there is no air resistance to slow down the lander.
