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The Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) announced on Wednesday (July 5) that the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has been successfully integrated with the launch vehicle, Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM3), at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota.
In a tweet, Isro said, “LVM3-M4/Chandrayaan-3 Mission: Today, at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, the encapsulated assembly containing Chandrayaan-3 is mated with LVM3.”
The Chandrayaan-3 project, which is scheduled to launch between July 12 and July 19, will be India’s second attempt to land a spacecraft on the Moon. The Chandrayaan-2 project, which launched on July 22, 2019, suffered a partial failure when its lander and rover landed on the Moon in the early hours of September 6.
Why was Chandrayaan-3 incorporated into LVM3?
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which consists of a lander, rover, and propulsion module, is unable of traveling to space on its own. It, like every satellite, must be attached to launch vehicles or rockets, such as the LVM3 in this case. Rockets feature powerful propulsion systems that generate the massive amounts of energy required to lift large things like satellites into orbit and overcome the Earth’s gravitational pull.
What is LVM3?
With a gross lift-off weight of 640 tonnes, an overall length of 43.5m, and a 5m-diameter payload fairing (nose-shaped equipment to protect the rocket from aerodynamic forces), LVM3 is India’s largest rocket. The launch vehicle can transport up to 8 tonnes of payload to lower earth orbits (LEO), which are approximately 200 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. However, it can only transport roughly four tonnes in geostationary transfer orbits (GTO), which are significantly further ahead, up to about 35,000 kilometers from Earth.
This is not to say that LVM3 is inferior than rockets utilized by other countries or space corporations for similar tasks. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Ariane5 rocket, for example, has a lift-off mass of 780 tonnes and can carry 20 tonnes of payloads to LEO and 10 tonnes to GTO.
LVM3 made its first trip into space in 2014, and it will also transport Chandrayaan-2 in 2019. Most recently, in March of this year, it launched 36 OneWeb spacecraft into low-Earth orbit (LEO), demonstrating its ability to launch many satellites into space. This was LVM3’s second commercial launch; the first was in October 2022, when it delivered the OneWeb India-1 mission.
What are the different parts of LVM3?
Rockets feature a number of detachable energy-producing components. To power the rocket, various types of fuel are burned. When their fuel runs out, they disconnect from the rocket and descend to the ground, often burning up in the atmosphere owing to air friction and being destroyed. Only a minor portion of the original rocket goes to the intended destination of the satellite, like Chandrayaan-3. Once the satellite is finally ejected, this last part of the rocket either becomes part of space debris or once again burns off after falling into the atmosphere.
LVM3 is a three-stage launch vehicle that consists of two solid boosters (S200), a core liquid fuel-based stage (L110), and a cryogenic upper stage (C25).
According to Isro: “The vehicle takes off with the simultaneous ignition of the two S200 boosters. The core stage (L110) is ignited at about 113s (seconds) through the flight, during the firing of the S200 stages. Both S200 motors burn for about 134s and the separation occurs at 137s. The payload fairing is separated at an altitude of 115 km and at about 217s during L110 firing. The L110 burnout and separation and C25 ignition occur at 313s. The spacecraft is injected into a GTO (Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit) orbit of 180×36000 km at a nominal time of 974s.”
Source:IE
