'Watching, praying, cheering', Anand Mahindra roots for Chandrayaan-3's success

As Chandrayaan-3 Mission is at its final stage before its historic landing scheduled for 23 April, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra has expressed his excitement on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter).

Business magnate Mahindra wrote said he will eagerly wait, pray and cheer for theChandrayaan-3 spacecraft's soft landing on the lunar surface.

Chandrayaan-3's lander module, comprising the lander ‘Vikram' and rover ‘Pragyan’, is expected to touch down on the lunar surface on August 23 evening, according to ISRO.

Launched on 14 July, Chandrayaan-3 has undergone several maneuvers and on Sunday the final deboosting (slowing down) operation successfully reduced the LM orbit to 25 km x 134 km. As per the Indian space agency, the Vikram lander will make a powered descent around 1745 Hrs IST.

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

Chandrayaan, which means "moon vehicle" in Sanskrit, includes a 2-metre-(6.6-foot)-tall lander designed to deploy a rover expected to remain functional for two weeks running a series of experiments.

For India, a successful moon landing would mark its emergence as a space power. With this mission, India will become the fourth country to master the technology of soft landing on the moon's surface after the US, China, and the former Soviet Union.

The lander module after landing on the surface of the moon 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 come out 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.