‘ISRO delayed Chandrayaan-3 launch to dodge space debris’

India's Chandrayaan-3 mission, which made a soft-landing near the south pole of the moon, lifted off four seconds late to avoid hitting a piece of space debris, the ISRO said in a recent report.

According to the Indian Situational Space Awareness Report (ISSAR) for 2023, the nominal lift-off of the Launch Vehicle Mark-3, carrying the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, had to be delayed by four seconds based on the Collision on Launch Avoidance (COLA) analysis. The delay was necessary to avoid close approaches between a debris object and the injected satellites in their orbital phase due to overlapping operational altitudes, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.