23rd August 2023 (8 Topics)
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Soft-landing on the Moon & the Challenges
Context
India is eagerly anticipating the successful soft landing of Chandrayaan-3's spacecraft on the Moon's south pole, aiming to become the first country to achieve this feat. The recent crash of Russia's Luna-25 highlights the challenges of safe lunar landings, with only a few nations, including the United States, Soviet Union, and China, having successfully soft-landed on the Moon.
What is soft landing?
- A soft landing entails a successful landing by a spacecraft without sustaining any significant damage to itself or its payloads.
- Whereas, in a hard landing, the probe suffers damage which may result in the failure of the mission.
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The South Pole
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Why is landing on Moon challenging?
Top of Form
- Less gravity than Earth: The Moon has much less gravity than the Earth. Its thin and tenuous atmosphere, along with lunar dust, also makes it tough for spacecraft to land.
- Dust: The presence of dust, even in very small quantities, can have a significant effect on temperature control and optical performance of hardware on the lunar surface.
- Deep space communication also poses a challenge as the “large distance from the Earth and the limited on-board and radio signals are weak with heavy background noises that need to be picked up by large antennas”.
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