Chandrayaan performs evasive manoeuvre to avoid collision with NASA’s orbiter

It is common for satellites in Earth Orbit to undergo CAM to mitigate collision risk due to space objects including space debris and operational spacecraft

India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft performed an evasive manoeuvre to avoid collision with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), according to ISRO.

A very close conjunction between Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter (CH2O) and LRO of NASA was expected to occur on October 20 this year at 05:45 UTC (11:15 a.m. IST) near the Lunar North pole, the Bengaluru-headquartered space agency said in a statement.

Over a span of one week prior to the conjunction, analyses by both ISRO and JPL/NASA consistently showed that the radial separation between the two spacecraft would be less than 100 metres and the closest approach distance would be only about three km at the time of closest approach.