India’s space agency Isro is set to initate the automatic landing sequence of its historic Chandrayaan-3 mission to the Moon’s uncharted south pole.
The space agency tweeted that Isro teams are awaiting the arrival of the mission’s Lander Module (LM) at its designated point around 5.44pm local time (1.14pm BST) to initate the landing sequence.
Once the landing command is initiated, the LM will activate its engines for a powered descent, the beginning of what is being called the “20 minutes of terror.”
The live telecast of the module’s descent phase will begin at 5.20pm Indian time.
During this key manoeuvre, the mission’s Vikram lander will start hurtling towards the lunar surface at about 1.68km per second and its engines need to fire to align the probe vertically to the Moon’s surface.
The module is expected to make a soft landing on the lunar south pole at about 6.04pm local time (12.34pm GMT/UTC).
Until now, no other country has achieved a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole, which is known to contain traces of water ice in its shadowed craters.
