'India, I reached my destination’: Chandrayaan-3 says after moon landing - the tech that made it all possible

tech.hindustantimes.com:

It took India about four years, and one heartbreak to launch the Chandrayaan-3 mission on July 14, 2023. It was not easy after the Chandrayaan-2 Landing Module crashed onto the lunar surface in the very final stages. Perhaps, the fears were even higher this time around after Russia's Luna-25 mission met a similar fate just days ago. But the Indian spacecraft continued against all odds and succeeded. The country is now the 4th nation in the world to land on the lunar surface, and the first country in the world to reach the South Pole of the Moon. But none of it would have been possible without the shrewd tech upgrades made by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

The emotional release was quite evident as can be gauged from ISRO's latest tweet that said, “India, I reached my destination and you too! Chandrayaan-3 has successfully soft-landed on the moon”. Just four years ago, in 2019, we saw the same space agency make the heart-breaking announcement that it failed to reach the Moon. Back then, no one thought India could make a comeback in such a short duration and put itself on the lunar surface.

To understand the tech upgrades, we first have to revisit what went wrong with the Chandrayaan-2 mission. The first Moon landing mission started on a great note, but the problem arrived in the last phase of the mission when the lander and the rover were supposed to reach the lunar surface. On September 6, 2019, the lander deviated from its trajectory. According to reports, it was said to be a software glitch that increased the thrust on five of the propulsion modules on the lander and caused the crash.

While on the surface the problem was limited to controlling the propulsion system, in reality, it was a range of different