BENGALURU: India is at the cusp of scripting history, as ISRO’s ambitious third Moon mission Chandrayaan-3’s Lander Module (LM) is all set to touch down on the lunar surface on Wednesday evening, making it only the fourth country to do so, and first to reach the uncharted south pole of Earth’s only natural satellite.

comprising the lander (Vikram) and the rover (Pragyan), is scheduled to make a touchdown near the south polar region of the Moon at 6:04 pm on Wednesday.

If the Chandrayaan-3 mission succeeds in making a touchdown on the moon and in landing a robotic lunar rover in ISRO’s second attempt in four years, India will become the fourth country to master the technology of soft-landing on the lunar surface after the US, China and the erstwhile Soviet Union.

Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 and its objectives are to demonstrate safe and soft-landing on the lunar surface, roving on the Moon, and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.

Chandrayaan-2 had failed in its lunar phase when its lander ‘Vikram’ crashed into the surface of the Moon minutes before the touchdown following anomalies in the braking system in the lander while attempting a landing on September 7, 2019.

Chandrayaan’s maiden mission was in 2008.

The Rs 600 crore Chandrayaan-3 mission was launched on July 14 onboard Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM-3) rocket, for a 41-day voyage to reach near the lunar south pole. The soft-landing is being attempted days after Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the Moon after spinning out of control.

After the second and final deboosting operation on August 20, the LM is now placed in a 25 km x 134 km orbit around the Moon. The module would undergo internal checks and await the sunrise at the designated landing site, ISRO has said, adding that the powered descent — to achieve soft-landing on the Moon’s surface — is expected to be initiated at around 5:45 pm on Wednesday.

ISRO’s Space Applications Centre Director Nilesh Desai had said, “If any health parameter (of the lander module) is found abnormal on August 23, then we will delay the landing by four days to August 27.”

The critical process of soft-landing has been dubbed by many including ISRO officials as with the entire process being autonomous when the lander has to fire its engines at the right times and altitudes, use the right amount of fuel, and scan of the lunar surface for any obstacles or hills or craters before finally touching down.

After checking all the parameters and deciding to land, ISRO will upload all the required commands from its Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu near here, to the LM, a couple of hours before the scheduled time touchdown.

According to ISRO officials, for landing, at around 30 km altitude, the lander enters the powered braking phase and begins to use its four thruster engines by “retro firing” them to reach the surface of the moon, by gradually reducing the speed.

This is to ensure the lander doesn’t crash, as the Moon’s gravity will also be in play.

Noting that on reaching an altitude of around 6.8 km, only two engines will be used, shutting down the other two, aimed at giving the reverse thrust to the lander as it descends further, they said, then, on reaching an altitude of about 150-100 metres, the lander, using its sensors and cameras, would scan the surface to check whether there are any obstacles and then start descending to make a soft-landing.

Instead of a success-based design in Chandrayaan-2, the space agency opted for a failure-based design in Chandrayaan-3, focused on what all can fail and how to protect it and ensure a successful landing, the ISRO chief said.

After the soft landing, the rover will descend from the lander’s belly, onto the Moon’s surface, using one of its side panels, which will act as a ramp. On landing the lander may have to face the challenge of lunar dust due to the firing of onboard engines close to the lunar surface.

The lander and rover will have a mission life of one lunar day (about 14 earth days) to study the surroundings there.

However, ISRO officials do not rule out the possibility of them coming to life for another lunar day.

The lander has the capability to soft-land at a specified lunar site and deploy the rover which will carry out in-situ chemical analysis of the lunar surface during the course of its mobility.

Both have scientific payloads to carry out experiments on the lunar surface.

Polar regions of the moon are very different terrain due to the environment and the difficulties they present and therefore have remained unexplored.

All the previous spacecraft to have reached the Moon landed in the equatorial region, a few degrees latitude north or south of the lunar equator.

The Moon’s south pole region is also being explored because there could be a possibility of the presence of water in permanently shadowed areas around it.

The LM has payloads including RAMBHA-LP which is to measure the near-surface plasma ions and electrons density and its changes, ChaSTE Chandra’s Surface Thermo Physical Experiment — to carry out the measurements of thermal properties of lunar surface near polar region– and ILSA (Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity) to measure seismicity around the landing site and delineating the structure of the lunar crust and mantle.

The rover, after the soft-landing, would ramp down of the lander module and study the surface of the moon through its payloads APXS – Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer – to derive the chemical composition and infer mineralogical composition to further enhance understanding of the lunar surface.

Ahead of its scheduled landing on the moon, Chandrayaan-3’s LM has established a two-way communication with Chandrayaan-2’s orbiter which continues to orbit around the Moon, giving the ground controllers more channels for communication with it.

The LM of Chandrayaan-3 had successfully separated from the Propulsion Module (PM) on August 17, which was 35 days after the satellite was launched on July 14.

Meanwhile, the PM, whose main function was to carry the LM from launch vehicle injection till lander separation orbit, will continue its journey in the current orbit for months/years, the space agency said.

Apart from this, the PM also has one scientific payload as a value addition.

The SHAPE (Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth) payload onboard it, whose future discoveries of smaller planets in reflected light would allow us to probe into a variety of Exo-planets which would qualify for habitability (or for the presence of life).

Post its launch on July 14, Chandrayaan-3 entered into the lunar orbit on August 5, following which orbit reduction manoeuvres were carried out on the satellite on August 6, 9, 14 and 16, ahead of separation of both its modules on August 17.

Earlier, over five moves in the three weeks since the July 14 launch, ISRO had lifted the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft into orbits farther and farther away from the Earth.

Then, on August 1 in a key manoeuvre — a slingshot move — the spacecraft was sent successfully towards the Moon from Earth’s orbit.

Following this trans-lunar injection, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft escaped from orbiting the Earth and began following a path that would take it to the vicinity of the moon.

The chief minister has also sought a report from Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar by 5 pm, officials said.

The officer of the Delhi government’s women and child development department has been booked for allegedly raping his friend’s minor daughter several times and impregnating her, police had said on Sunday.

The girl was staying with the accused – a deputy director in the department – and his family at their house after her father passed away on October 1, 2020.

The accused had raped the girl several times between November 2020 and January 2021. His wife has also been charged with giving her medicine to terminate a pregnancy.

The girl returned home with her mother in January 2021 when she came to meet her.

She had an anxiety attack in August this year and her mother admitted her to St Stephen’s hospital, where the girl narrated the whole incident during counselling session, police said.

Police said the case was registered under Indian Penal Code sections 376(2)(f)(being a relative, guardian or teacher of, or a person in a position of trust or authority towards the woman, commits rape on such woman), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to outrage the modesty of a woman), 506 (criminal intimidation), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 313 (causing miscarriage without women’s consent), 120B ( (criminal conspiracy) and provisions of the POCSO Act.

MUMBAI: A day after putting out a public notice to auction a villa owned by actor and sitting BJP Member of Parliament Sunny Deol to recover Rs 56 crore dues, Bank of Baroda on Monday said the process is withdrawn due to technical reasons.

In a public notice on Sunday, the state-owned bank had said it would e-auction ‘Sunny Villa’ in the Juhu area of the city on September 25.

But in a similar notice on Monday, Bank of Baroda said the e-auction notice published on August 20 “stands withdrawn due to technical reason”.

When contacted, the bank did not offer any reason for the withdrawal of the notice.

The Gurdaspur MP, whose latest movie Gadar 2 is a box office success having already grossed over Rs 300 crore since the release last week, has been in default on a Rs 55.99 crore loan from the bank, interest and penalty, since December 2022.

As per Sunday’s notice, the bank, which has attached the property, had fixed the reserve price for the auction at Rs 51.43 crore and an earnest money deposit of Rs 5.14 crore.

Apart from Sunny Villa, the 599.44 square metre property also houses Sunny Sounds, which is owned by the Deols, and is the corporate guarantor to the loan, while Sunny’s actor-politician father Dharmendra is the personal guarantor of the debt, according to the auction notice.

The notice had further said the Deols had the option of clearing the dues of the bank to prevent the auction, under the provisions of the Sarfaesi Act 2002.

Sunny Deol has been representing BJP from the Gurdaspur seat of Punjab since 2019.

NEW DELHI: Soaring vegetable prices after a bad harvest have prompted Burger King’s Indian outlets to take tomatoes off their menu items, following in the footsteps of other fast food giants.

“Even tomatoes need a vacation!” read a notice at an outlet in the capital New Delhi on Thursday.

The burger franchise has operated across India since 2014, replacing its usual lineup of beef burgers with an assortment of chicken and vegetarian substitutes to accommodate Hindu objections to cattle slaughter.

It is the latest of several chains to stop serving the vegetable.

McDonald’s said in July it was taking tomatoes off its menus as a temporary measure due to “seasonal issues”, local media reported.

American sandwich chain Subway followed suit the same month, saying they were facing “quality issues”.

Last week, the Reserve Bank of India warned that higher food prices had impacted household budgets and were expected to get worse.

It added that tomato prices had soared after bad weather and pest attacks in major production belts.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government had removed import restrictions to source tomatoes from neighbouring Nepal to help ease pressure on food prices.