ISRO - Chandrayaan-3: lunar exploration mission

[eeergo]

Is the following an actual video or CGI?

https://twitter.com/SpaceCosmicCrew/status/1948322117281317127

The dust manages to blow in a nonexistant breeze, the lander has somehown grown desk chair castor wheels, and the exhaust plumes emerge from some random location rather than the very visible nozzle bells, and the engines cut off before the lander reaches apogee. That, and Pragran does not have a video camera to capture that view.

You get three guesses whether it's real or not, and the first three don't count.

Quick cheatsheet for those not disturbed enough to have watched enough lunar footage videos to be able to intuitively spot fakes:

- High framerates at real-time playback speeds, with no optical artifacts, interference or glitches in the image.
- Propulsion systems operating in visually familiar ways for what one would expect on Earth:
       - Giving off thick smoke plumes.
       - Showing well-defined, long and bright exhaust plumes
       - Flames (!)
       - Surface interactions with the regolith are limited to the immediate vicinity of the engines
       - Regolith doesn't fly off in straight trajectories, but billows and exhibits thick turbulence
- Regolith not falling down quickly to the ground or dispersing beyond observability, especially if forming thick clouds
- Lack of unfamiliar (with respect to Earth) behavior of flappy items, regolith and gases, or lack of consistency in such behavior from one scene to another

Rarer to find, but somewhat important extra clues for this particular clip:

- Office chair wheels on lunar landers coming out of the regolith
- Some kind of jettisoned cap resting next to one of the landing legs doesn't get blown away or take off with the lander, yet it mysteriously disappeared after the dust blows in the (notorious lunar) wind to the left of the frame
- Lander appears flubbery/soft before engine start and at just takeoff (e.g. engine nozzle), however flappy appendages like the panels, top deck appendages and rover ramp barely move with the jarring accelerations it appears subject to

[Phil Stooke]

We could add: the ramp was retracted before the hop, the lander only moved about 40 cm backwards, not multiple meters sideways, and it happened near sunset whereas this has noon lighting. The clip is a great bit of fun - the wheels are a really nice touch.

[StraumliBlight]

Chandrayaan-3 Fly-by [Nov 13]

Chandrayaan-3 (CH-3) mission is to demonstrate safe and soft landing on Lunar Surface, demonstrate Rover roving on the Moon and conduct in-situ experiments. CH-3 mission consisted the Lander Module, Propulsion Module and a Rover. The satellite was successfully launched on-board LVM3 from SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota on July 14, 2023, at 14:35 Hrs. IST.

After the historic lunar landing of CH3 on August 23, 2023, its Propulsion Module (PM) was operated in its lunar orbit at an altitude of nearly 150 km till October 2023. The PM was then relocated to a high-altitude Earth-bound orbit by executing Trans-Earth Injection (TEI) manoeuvres in October 2023. Since then, CH3-PM was revolving in this orbit under the influence of the Earth's and Moon's gravity fields.

This interplay of gravity fields has led the spacecraft to enter the Moon Sphere of Influence (SOI) on November 04, 2025, where the Moon's gravitation dominates the motion. On November 06, 2025 07:23 UT, the first lunar flyby event took place outside the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) visibility at a distance of 3740 km from the Moon's surface. The second flyby event was visible from the IDSN, the closest approach distance was 4537 km from the Moon's surface on November 11, 2025, 23:18 UT. CH3-PM is expected to exit the Moon's SOI on November 14, 2025.

The satellite orbit has changed from 1 lakh x 3 lakh km to 4.09 lakh x 7.27 lakh km in terms of size and its inclination changed from 34 deg to 22 deg due to this flyby events. The flyby event trajectory has been monitored very closely from ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), ISRO. A special care was taken to monitor its trajectory and close proximities from the Beyond Earth Space Objects. The overall Satellite performance is normal during the flyby and no close approach was experienced with the other lunar orbiters. This event garnered valuable insights and experience from mission planning, operations, flight dynamics perspectives, and especially enhanced the understanding of disturbance torques effects