Chandrayaan-3 on July 25 performed its fifth and last Earth-bound orbit-raising maneuver, post which it positioned itself for lunar insertion. Now, the spacecraft is ready to break Earth’s gravitational pull and is just six days away from entering the lunar orbit!
Chandrayaan‘s Trans-Lunar Injection is scheduled for August 1, 2023, sometime between midnight and 1 am IST. The scheduled TLI will slingshot the spacecraft towards the Moon, marking the beginning of its lunar journey. The spacecraft is expected to make its much-talked-about and significant landing on the Moon on August 23, 2023.
Chandrayaan-3 Mission: What is the Trans-Lunar Injection Manoeuvre?
Translunar injection (TLI) is a critical maneuver used in spaceflight to propel a spacecraft from Earth’s orbit to a trajectory that takes it beyond the Moon and into a lunar trajectory. This maneuver is necessary for missions that involve sending spacecraft, such as crewed missions or robotic probes, to destinations beyond Earth, like the Moon or other planets in the solar system.
When a spacecraft is in low Earth orbit (LEO), it travels at a relatively high velocity around the Earth. To break free from the Earth’s gravitational pull and reach the Moon, it needs an additional burst of propulsion to increase its velocity and enter a trajectory that intersects the Moon’s orbit. This propulsion maneuver is called the translunar injection.
The translunar injection is typically performed when the spacecraft is at a specific point in its orbit, often referred to as the “perigee” or the closest point to Earth. By firing its onboard engines at this point, the spacecraft can gain enough speed to leave Earth’s gravitational influence and start its journey toward the Moon.
TLI is a critical maneuver for lunar missions, and its success depends on precise calculations and engineering of the spacecraft’s propulsion system. It has been a fundamental step in historic missions like the Apollo missions, which successfully landed humans on the Moon, as well as in various robotic missions exploring the Moon and other celestial bodies in the solar system.