Ahead of Chandrayaan-3 lander’s soft landing ISRO assesses current situation around the moon

ISRO assesses space situation around Moon; 6 active lunar orbiters, Yutu-2 rover only active rover. India pro-actively taking initiatives to bring out guidelines for sustainable space operations in cislunar and lunar regions.

In the run-up to the Chandrayaan-3’s lander’s soft landing on the moon’s surface on August 23, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has carried out an assessment of the current space situation around the moon.

The space agency which released the document on August 9 stated that the moon and Mars are the most explored and also comparatively more crowded planetary bodies at present.

It added that India’s Chandrayaan-3 is the latest entry into lunar orbit and more intensified activities around the moon are foreseen in the next few years due to the renewed interest in lunar exploration, heralded by Artemis missions for return to the moon and preparations for colonisation of Mars.

“While the previous missions were essentially aimed at scientific explorations, upcoming ventures will likely involve multiple actors of diverse interests, including those primarily driven by resource utilisation for commercial purposes. A better understanding of the environment is needed to formulate reasonable mitigation practices to avoid close-approach threats in planetary orbits,” ISRO said.

ISRO said that as of July 2023, there are six active lunar orbiters.

It said that two of the five probes of NASA’s THEMIS mission have been re-purposed under ARTEMIS as ARTEMIS P1 and ARTEMIS P2 and both operate in eccentric orbits of low inclination.

The assessment stated that NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) orbits the moon in a nearly polar, slightly elliptical orbit. The Chandrayaan-2, the second lunar mission of ISRO and Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) also operate in polar orbits of 100 km altitude.