NASA's Orbiter Successfully Locates ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon

NASA's Orbiter Successfully Locates ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon

India's space research division, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), has located its mission, Chandrayaan-3, back on the surface of the moon. They used the satellite's laser altimeter instrument to beam and receive laser pulses from a minuscule NASA retroreflector instrument of the Vikram lander within India's Chandrayaan-3 mission. This is the first time that such a technique has been used to precisely locate a target on the Moon from orbit. Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2, which was an attempt to soft land the Vikram near the lunar south pole in September 2019. The Chandrayaan-3 mission will have a lander like that of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, Vikram, and rover like Pragyan but with improvements.The mission was launched on July 14, 2023, using LVM3-M4 launch vehicle from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC-SHAR). The primary objective of the Chandrayaan-3 mission is safe and soft landing on the surface of the moon, vehicle stability on the lunar su…