India is all set to launch its much-awaited Moon mission Chandrayaan-3 on Friday, July 14. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will be re-attempting the landing on Earth's only satellite with Chandrayaan-3. This is India's third Moon exploration mission after Chandrayaan-1 and Chandrayaan-2 in 2008 and 2019 respectively. The Moon mission will be launched from Sriharikota's Satish Dhawan Space Centre or SDSC, formerly SHAR, which was also the launching pad for the previous Moon mission. So, why does ISRO choose Sriharikota's SDSC each time for launching Chandrayaan? Let's find out.
Why does ISRO choose SDSC as its ideal launching site?
Satish Dhawan Space Centre or SDSC is a 53-year-old odyssey which began in the year 1969 and became India's primary spaceport. It is a spaceport on the eastern coastline of Andhra Pradesh's Tirupati district. It is an ideal place for space launches and is chosen because a space mission requires a certain amount of velocity to throw the spacecraft into space.
The space centre's is located in a spindle-shaped barrier island and also its closeness to the equator makes it a perfect spaceport.
These three points make SDSC, an ideal location for space missions, specifically Chandrayaan-3.
- Since the region of Southern India is close to the equator, it saves a lot of expensive rocket fuel, making the mission more economical. Most of the space satellites orbit the Earth around the equator due to this reason only. And these satellites take the same time Earth rotates in its axis.
- Just like a discus thrower gains momentum before throwing it, the same goes with the space rocket. As the Earth rotates from West to East, and if the launch pad is also near to the equator, it gives an extra thrust in generating velocity to the launching vehicle.
- One more advantage of Satish Dhawan Space Centre is that it is located on the Eastern coast of South India. Any satellite launched from here will be moving in the eastern direction, and as the rocket disintegrates several times at different stages after the launch, no debris will be falling into any nearby residential areas and drop into the Bay of Bengal.
