According to the official, the firing of the onboard motors began at about 7.15 p.m. and the spacecraft was steered towards the moon orbit.The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), in a tweet, said: "MOX, ISTRAC, this is Chandrayaan-3, I am feeling lunar gravity.""Chandrayaan-3 has been successfully inserted into the lunar orbit.A retro-burning at the Perilune was commanded from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX), ISTRAC, Bengaluru.The next operation - reduction of orbit – is scheduled for Aug 6, 2023, around 23:00 Hrs. IST."The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was put into orbit on July 14 in a copybook style by India's heavy lift rocket LVM3.The spacecraft comprises a propulsion module (weighing 2,148 kg), a lander (1,723.89 kg), and a rover (26 kg). The main object of the mission is to safely send the lander onto the lunar soil. The lander will get separated from the propulsion module a couple of days and later expected to make a soft-landing near the South Pole of the moon on August 23 evening at 5.47 p.m.The lander will descend to the moon from a height of about 100 km from the moon's surface. The soft landing is a tricky issue as it involves a series of complex manoeuvres consisting of rough and fine braking. Imaging of the landing site region prior to landing will be done for finding safe and hazard-free zones.Subsequent to the soft landing, the six-wheeled rover will roll out and carry out experiments on the lunar surface for a period of one lunar day which is equal to 14 earth days. On August 1, Chandrayaan-3 completed orbiting around the earth and headed towards the moon. On that day a successful perigee-firing performed at ISTRAC, ISRO has injected the spacecraft into the translunar orbit.--IANSvj/vd(Disclaimer: This post has been auto published from IANS news agency without any modification to the text and has not been reviewed by editor)
