Science: What helped Vikram Lander to soft-land on the moon?
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Science: What helped Vikram Lander to soft-land on the moon?
There are four important phases before the touchdown on the Moon—
- the rough braking phase,
- the attitude-hold orientation phase,
- the fine braking phase, and
- The landing phase.
During the Chandrayaan-2 mission, the rough braking phase was executed perfectly. Problems began when the Vikram lander entered the second phase– the attitude hold phase.
In the phase, the thrust had to be maintained at half the level. But the achieved thrust was more than half.
Hence, the guidance system malfunctioned leading to full thrust being given to the lander.
The control system in the fine braking phase could not correct the error as it was not designed to produce large changes in velocity and altitude.
Changes in the system prevented these three errors from recurring in the latest Chandrayaan-3 mission. Other changes suggested by the failure analysis committee were also incorporated.