Chandarayaan-3: Vikram landing set for 6.04pm August 23; Russia loses Luna-25 | India News

BEGALURU: Hours after Vikram, the Chandrayaan-3 lander entered the pre-landing orbit of 25km x 134km, Isro said its landing was scheduled for 6.04pm on August 23.
“…The module now would undergo internal checks and await Sun-rise at the designated landing site. Powered descent is expected to commence on August 23 at around 5.45pm. Chandrayaan-3 is set to land on the lunar surface around 6.04pm,” Isro said.

Meanwhile, several hours after it first announced that there was a glitch with Luna-25, Russian space agency, Roscosmos, on Sunday said it has lost the spacecraft.
“On August 19, in accordance with the flight programme of Luna-25 spacecraft, an impulse was provided to form its pre-landing elliptical orbit. At about 14:57 Moscow time, communication with the Luna-25 spacecraft was interrupted. Measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and get into contact with it did not produce any results,” Roscosmos said.

It further added that “…according to the results of the preliminary analysis, due to the deviation of the actual parameters of the impulse from the calculated ones, the device switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface.”