In what is viewed as a big boost to India's Chandrayaan-3 mission, the spacecraft on Sunday completed its final lunar orbital move ahead of its planned landing on the Moon on Wednesday, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement.
With this maneuver, the distance between the Moon and the Vikram lander has dropped to 25 km from the closest point of the lunar surface; the farthest from orbit is 134 km.
It is from here that the lander will attempt to perform a soft landing on the Moon's crater in three days.
"The second and final deboosting operation has successfully reduced the LM orbit to 25 km x 134 km. The module would undergo internal checks and await the sun-rise at the designated landing site. The powered descent is expected to commence on August 23, 2023, around 1745 Hrs. IST," ISRO wrote on X (previously Twitter).
If the lander succeeds to land on the lunar surface, India will join a select group of nations to have accomplished a soft landing on the Moon. So far, only the United States, China, and the erstwhile Soviet Union have achieved the feat.
After the spacecraft's landing on the crater, the rover will separate from the lander before carrying out experiments in the polar region of the Moon's South Pole for two weeks, or one lunar day.