Chandrayaan-3 Launch Was Delayed By 4 Seconds: Here Is Why
Chandrayaan-3 was delayed by four seconds to avoid hitting a piece of space debris. Chandrayaan is India's third mission to the moon.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has revealed that the launch of the country's third mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-3, was delayed by four seconds. According to the ISRO, the lift-off of Chandrayaan-3 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on 14 July 2023, was delayed to avoid hitting a piece of space debris.
SRO
Space debris cause Chandrayaan-3 launch delay
In a recently published report, the Indian Situational Space Awareness Report (ISSAR) for 2023, it was revealed that the nominal lift-off of the Launch Vehicle Mark-3, carrying Chandrayaan-3 had to be delayed by four seconds based on the Collision on Launch Avoidance (COLA) analysis.
"For LVM3-M4/ Chandrayaan-3, the nominal lift-off had to be delayed by 4 seconds based on COLA analysis to avoid close approaches between a debris object and the injected satellites in their orbital phase due to overlapping operational altitudes," ISRO said.
What is space debris
Space debris is human-generated objects, such as pieces of spacecraft, tiny flecks of paint from a spacecraft, parts of rockets, satellites that are no longer working, or explosions of objects in orbit flying around in space at high speeds.
Representational Image
According to NASA, there are millions of pieces of space debris flying in the low Earth orbit (LEO) and they can pose a serious threat to spacecraft in case of a collision.
Other ISRO missions delayed by space debris
The report also stated that Chandrayaan-3 was not the only launch ISRO had to delay slightly in 2023 to avoid collision with space debris.
The launch of two Singaporean satellites -- DS-SAR satellite onboard the PSLV-C56 on July 30, 2023, and TeLEOS-2 on April 24 was delayed by one minute each following a COLA analysis.
ISRO
Chandrayaan-3 mission
ISRO launched the Chandrayaan-3 mission with lunar lander module Vikram and rover Pragyan on July 14, 2023, and it entered lunar orbit on 5 August.
India created history on August 23, 2023, by successfully landing the lander on the moon's south pole, becoming the first country to do so.
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