Congratulations Vikram, You Made It!

Starting your 40-day journey on July 14 piggybacking on LVM-3 that was launched from Sriharikota and sitting quietly in the Chandrayan -3 spacecraft, of course, in the company of propulsion module got yourself placed in an elongated earth orbit with an apogee of about 36500 km above the planet.

You coolly circled the earth from July 15 to 25 while your creators back home maneuvered to raise your orbit around the earth so that you could slingshot yourself towards the moon on the scheduled day … … interestingly, without, of course, sulking about spending so many days in space going round and round the earth … … may be appreciating the fact of your masters not having powerful rockets to place you in one go in lunar orbit, and yet innovatively planning for such multiple revolutions around the earth for so many days could afford you the required momentum to slingshot to the moon … … and perhaps, being proud of their frugal venture … … of sending you to moon so daringly … …

And starting on 1^st August … of course, aided by your masters’ maneuvers … … you did insert yourself in lunar orbit on 5^th August.

Once placed in the lunar orbit, you again patiently orbited the moon till 16 th of August to come closer to the moon … … of course, as maneuvered by your masters from Bangaluru … … … ….  

Later, having unerringly separated from the propulsion module on 17^th August … … and bidding adieu to your companion of all these days … … you merrily took a separate path of your own to orbit the moon till 23^rd of August … … just to slow down yourself expending very little fuel…   

Come 23^rd August, as your masters holding their breath watched you on their monitors, you started your powered descent to the moon from an altitude of 25 Km horizontally @ 1.7 km per second. You fired your four main engines to cut about 80% of that speed. In just 11 minutes you descended from 25 km to 7.4 km.

Next, keeping your orientation relative to the surface fixed with the aid of your eight thrusters descended from 7.4 Km to 6.8 km above the moon’s surface …  … all in about 10 seconds.

Then, duly supported by the sensors, you passed through the last phase … … “fine braking” phase … … using only two of your four main engines you descended up to 850 meters above the moon’s surface … …    

Here, you hovered for 12 seconds with all your four legs pointing downwards to check if you were above the intended landing spot by capturing pictures of the surface and comparing them to the preloaded onboard satellite images and confirming that you were above the predetermined safe landing spot you descended to 150 mt within two minutes.

Once descended to 150 mt, you again hovered for 22 seconds while your navigation, guidance, and control system together with the hazard avoidance sensors and the actuators brought you from a perfectly horizontal to a perfectly vertical position and reevaluating the area below for landing hazards, if any and picking up the safe spot for touch down … … you landed on the moon gracefully at 6.04 pm Indian time … … at once, wild cheering filled the control room … …  your masters were on their feet clapping happily at the success of your Odessey … … their Odessey!

In fact, you must thank your masters for this time round they endowed you with so many new strengths: they gave you two cameras, instead of one as before, to detect and avoid hazards; they gave you laser doppler velocimeter to sense your speed in three directions; you were loaded with more fuel to make necessary adjustments in your path, orientation, and speeds; your legs have been strengthened to withstand your weight better you were enabled to choose your landing site from a larger area on the moon’s surface; and above all your processing system for hazard avoidance was sped up to enable you to take landing decision much faster than your predecessor, Chandrayan-2 … … see, they gave you so much strength to make a wise decision for safe landing … …  

Watching your triumphant touchdown on the moon—indeed, you had the distinction of being the first to land on the south pole of the moon—even I cried in joy forgetting that I was in the office … … in fact, every Indian crazily jumped in joy the moment you smoothly landed on the moon … …  

Vikram, salutations to thee, you stood up to the aspirations of your founder leader, Dr Vikram  Sarabhai.