An illustration displaying the soft-landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the floor of the Moon. The spacecraft is ready to land on August 23, 2023 round 6.04 p.m. IST. Photo: Twitter/@isro through PTI
Since the launch of the Chandrayaan-3 mission on July 14, the floor stations of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have been supporting Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to watch the spacecraft’s well being.
“Since the launch of Chandrayaan-3, ESA has been supporting the mission by utilising two of the ground stations in the ESTRACK network to track the satellite in its orbit, receive telemetry from the spacecraft and forward it to the Mission Operations Centre in Bengaluru, and forward commands sent from Bengaluru to the flying satellite,” Ramesh Chellathurai, floor operations engineer at ESOC Darmstadt, Germany advised The Hindu.
The ESA’s 15-metre antenna in Kourou, French Guiana, and the 32-metre antenna belonging to Goonhilly Earth Station, U.Ok., had been chosen for the support, primarily based on their technical capabilities in addition to their durations of geometric visibility to the satellite tv for pc.
“These two stations have been communicating with the Chandrayaan-3 mission on a regular basis, providing a complete communication channel between the Mission Operations Team in Bengaluru and the Chandrayaan-3 satellite,” Mr. Chellathurai added.
Now, with the Chandrayaan-3’s Lander attempting to the touch down on the lunar floor on August 23, the support of the floor stations of those businesses turns into much more essential.
The ESA’s 35-metre deep house antenna in New Norcia, Australia, a 3rd floor station in the ESTRACK community, has been set-up to trace and talk with the Lander Module during the Lunar Descent section.
The New Norcia antenna will function a back-up for ISRO’s personal floor station during the descent. It will obtain details about the Lander Module’s well being, location and trajectory in parallel with the ISRO station.
“It will be this telemetry that is used to confirm the success of the landing. This type of back-up support is common during the key moments of a space mission, such as a landing. After a successful landing, data collected by the mission’s Rover will be routed via the Lander Module to the ground stations. These valuable scientific data will be received by the antennas in Kourou and Goonhilly and forwarded to the Mission Operations Centre in Bengaluru,” Mr. Chellathurai stated.
As far as NASA is worried, its Deep Space Network is offering telemetry and monitoring protection during the powered descent section from Deep Space Station (DSS)-36 and DSS-34 at Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex adopted by DSS-65 at Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex.
“We receive the telemetry from the spacecraft that has the data on the health and status as well as instrument measurements and pass them on to ISRO in practically real-time. We also monitor the radio signal itself for the Doppler effect, which is the primary tool for navigating the spacecraft. This is the critical information during the landing phase and tells us in real-time how it is doing,” Sami Asmar, Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Interplanetary Network Directorate Customer Interface Manager, stated.
He added that major support for the mission comes from the DSN advanced in California as a result of that’s precisely on the different aspect of the Earth from India and could be in view of the Moon when the station in India can’t see the Moon.
