The ’15 minutes of anxiety’ for Chandrayaan-3 before today’s historic Moon landing

The ’15 minutes of anxiety’ for Chandrayaan-3 before today’s historic Moon landing

Today marks the D-Day for Isro’s ambitious Chandrayaan-3 mission as the Vikram lander makes an attempt at a’soft landing’ on the Moon. Later this evening, the lander, which is carrying the Pragyaan rover, will start to descend.

India is making a lunar landing. Again. The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is attempting to land on the Moon once more, four years after the Chandrayaan-2 mission partially failed. The Chandrayaan-3 mission’s Vikram lander, which is currently in orbit around the Moon, will start a gradual, methodical descent into the lunar surface later tomorrow evening.

A previous Isro leader has referred to the landing sequence as “15 minutes of terror” because it will start about 5:45 and run for about 30 minutes.