{"id":38496,"date":"2023-12-07T05:06:02","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T23:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=38496"},"modified":"2025-04-23T11:35:47","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T06:05:47","slug":"chandrayaan-3-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/chandrayaan-3-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Chandrayaan-3 Propulsion Module retraces steps to Earth Orbit"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What\u2019s in Today\u2019s Article?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Why in the News?<\/li>\n<li>What is Chandrayaan-3 Mission?<\/li>\n<li>What is a Propulsion Module in Chandrayaan-3?<\/li>\n<li>Significance of Propulsion Module Coming Back to Earth\u2019s Orbit<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why in the News?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Scientists have brought the Propulsion Module (PM) of the Chandrayaan-3 mission back into Earth orbit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What is Chandrayaan-3 Mission?<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/media\/editor_images\/2023\/12\/7\/13\/0\/7\/6571747fa6a39625a78ba9c6_OI.PNG\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 (2019) to demonstrate ISRO\u2019s end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the Moon&#8217;s surface.<\/li>\n<li>It comprises an indigenous propulsion module, lander module (called Vikram), and a rover (called Pragyaan) with the objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for inter-planetary missions.<\/li>\n<li>The propulsion module, other than carrying the lander and rover configuration till about 100 km lunar orbit, carries the Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study spectral and polarimetric measurements of the Earth from lunar orbit.<\/li>\n<li>On August 23<sup>rd<\/sup>, Vikram Lander made its historic touchdown on Moon and subsequently Pragyaan rover was deployed.<\/li>\n<li>With the success of Chandrayaan-3, India joined United States, Russia, and China\u00a0as one of the few countries to successfully\u00a0land on the Moon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What is a Propulsion Module in Chandrayaan-3?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The propulsion module is a box-shaped component of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft powered by solar panels.<\/li>\n<li>With regard to Propulsion Module, the main objective was to ferry the Lander module to the final lunar polar circular orbit and separate the Lander.<\/li>\n<li>Subsequent to separation, SHAPE payload in the PM was also operated.<\/li>\n<li>The initial plan was to operate this payload for about three months during the mission life of PM.<\/li>\n<li>On December 4<sup>th<\/sup>, the ISRO announced that it had moved Chandrayaan-3&#8217;s PM out of lunar orbit and placed it high above Earth for a bonus mission, where it now survives on leftover fuel.<\/li>\n<li>The new experiment will demonstrate technologies that will help Indian scientists bring samples from the moon to Earth someday, ISRO said.<\/li>\n<li>The ISRO has not revealed what it plans to do with the spacecraft when it runs out of fuel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Significance of Propulsion Module Coming Back to Earth\u2019s Orbit<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>ISRO added that the following are the main outcome from the return maneuvers carried out on PM related to future missions:\n<ul>\n<li>Planning and execution of trajectory and maneuvers to return from Moon to Earth.<\/li>\n<li>Development of a software module to plan such a maneuver and its preliminary validation.<\/li>\n<li>Planning and execution of a gravity assisted flyby across a planet\/celestial body.<\/li>\n<li>Avoiding uncontrolled crashing of the PM on the Moon\u2019s surface at the end of life of PM thus meeting the requirements of no debris creation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is the meaning of Low Earth Orbit?<\/h3>\n<p>A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25.<\/p>\n<h3>Q2) What is meant by space debris?<\/h3>\n<p>Space debris, artificial material that is orbiting Earth but is no longer functional. This material can be as large as a discarded rocket stage or as small as a microscopic chip of paint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have brought the Propulsion Module of the Chandrayaan-3 mission back into Earth orbit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":38497,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}