Why Chandrayaan-3 Launch Was Delayed By 4 Seconds

Chandrayaan-3's lift-off had to be delayed by four seconds to avoid any possible collision with space debris and satellites, the Indian Space Research Organisation has revealed.

"For LVM3-M4/ Chandrayaan-3, the nominal lift-off had to be delayed by 4 seconds based on COLA analysis to avoid close approaches between a debris object and the injected satellites in their orbital phase due to overlapping operational altitudes," ISRO said in a recent post.

The space agency asserted no concerning close approaches with other space objects were detected for the the country's moon mission throughout its mission phases.

ISRO released an 'Indian Space Situational Assessment Report' for the year 2023 of Friday which assesses the space environment, its future evolution and hazards for safe and sustainable operations in outer space. The space situational activities include a close approach assessment of satellites and launch vehicles.

It also highlighted a growing trend in the space object population, indicative of better accessibility to space and the increasingly diverse applications of space technology.

The report also outlined ISRO's space object proximity analysis for satellites to predict close approaches by other space objects to Indian space assets. "In case of any critical close approach, collision avoidance manoeuvres (CAM) are carried out to safeguard the operational spacecraft," ISRO said.

India's moon mission, Chandrayaan-3, with lunar lander module Vikram and rover Pragyaan was launched from the ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh's Sriharikota on July 14 last year.

On August 23, 2023, India scripted history be becoming the first country to safely land a craft near the moon's south pole region. The experiments were carried out for one lunar day which is equivalent to 14 Earth days.

With the touchdown, India became the fourth country to master the technology of soft landing on the lunar surface after the US, China and the erstwhile Soviet Union.