Thoughts and Best wishes - On Chandrayaan 3
Major observations
1.
Please refer to my analysis of Chandrayaan 2 Mission.
https://lnkd.in/dUTpHehD
2.
In that Op-Ed article I had suggested the following:
India will need to soft land often and even be able to take off from the lunar surface to fulfill its ambitious goals for human space exploration and sample returns.
Only one week after the Vikram mishap, I submitted a proposal online for the launch of another lander that would serve as a follow-up mission to Chandrayaan-2. Called Chandrayaan-2A, the mission would demonstrate a soft landing using a lunar lander with optional ascent capabilities that would allow the spacecraft to "hop" on the moon.
3.
To my knowledge hopping capability is not discussed yet by ISRO.
It is necessary capability for future exploration and must be tried in future missions if not in Chandrayaan 3 landing module.
4.
In collaboration with another observer, we found that there is a strong image based evidence that Vikram Lander is still intact even though it has left debris during violent descent, Since the south pole coordinates require grazing solar angles and have shadows it was hard to get submeter images from the only high resolution imagery source namely NASA LRO. So I requested and received a few more images where more analysis is required to be done to consistently verify Vikram Lander standing as a whole.
5.
There is an opportunity with recent lunar orbiters from (Japan / Korea?) to obtain high resolution imagery to verify this.
6.
Last but not the least, why did not ISRO try Radioisotope thermal generator on this mission to provide nighttime power capabilities rather than staying on the most conservative option of waking up the Lander at Lunar Sunrise?
I tried to provide these inputs but did not succeed in breaking the former colleagues firewall!
In spite of these suggestions not being followed, there is a silver line as teams have done very thorough testing and qualification and simulations and Lander will in all likelihood succeed this time.
Best wishes and also best wishes for finally starting through Artemis Accord a NASA linked Human Spaceflight program - similar to that I proposed to then ISRO Chair in 1975 (25 page document in ISRO library) relating to Space Shuttle and the Space Station and ISRO participation, that were overlooked.
Best wishes for a successful landing on Moon. ISRO, India and we all need it.
Ravi
(Dr. Ravi Sharma, Ph.D. USA)
NASA Apollo Achievement Award
ISRO Distinguished Service Award
Former Scientist NASA HQ and
Former Scientific Secretary ISRO HQ
Ontolog Board of Trustees
Particle and Space Physics
Senior Enterprise Architect
How India's moon crash wasn't really a failure (op-ed)
space.com • 16 min read
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram