Chandrayaan-3: ‘Sling-shot mechanism used for launch’

As the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which has covered about two-thirds of the distance to the Moon since its launch, successfully entered into the Lunar orbit on Saturday, former ISRO scientist Tapan Mishra said the lunar mission was an illustration of the country breaking new grounds in space exploration. Speaking to ANI in Kolkata, Mishra said, “Our rockets (launch vehicles) are not very powerful. Once the rockets escape the earth, they need a velocity of 11.2 km/s to make further progress. Since our launch vehicles don’t operate at such velocity, we resorted to the sling-slot mechanism.” Earlier, on Saturday, a post in the official Twitter handle of ISRO read, “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.” “MOX, ISTRAC, this is Chandrayaan-3. I am feeling lunar gravity,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) added in another tweet. Chandrayaan-3, India’s third lunar exploration mission, was launched on GSLV Mark 3 (LVM 3) heavy-lift launch vehicle successfully from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on July 14.