Only six days are left for Chandrayaan-3 from reaching the lunar orbit with another important manoeuvre, that will see ISRO's sling shot the spacecraft towards the moon. 

Chandrayaan-3 is India's third lunar mission and the Chandrayaan-3 is planned to reach between 12 am and 1 am on August.

The midnight trans-lunar injection (TLI) manoeuvre is expected to last between 28 and 31 minutes and onboard thrusters of the spacecraft will be fired when the spacecraft is at the closest point to Earth (perigee) and not when at the farthest point (apogee).

At present, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is going around Earth in an elliptical orbit at a velocity ranging between 1km/second and 10.3km/second.

The velocity is highest (10.3km/second) at perigee and lowest at apogee and while attempting the slingshot, the spacecraft will need to have a high velocity. The other reason is that its angle will have to change to travel towards Moon, which can be added if the operation is carried out at perigee.

On average, it takes about 51 hours to travel 1. 2-lakh km. While the average distance between Earth and Moon is 3.8- lakh km, the actual distance on any given day would vary based on the position of Earth and Moon. The range could be between 3. 6-lakh km and 4-lakh km.

Reaching Moon's orbit is only one part of the mission-Isro had already put a satellite around Moon in 2008 (Chandrayaan-1) and 2019 (Chandrayaan-2)- and the more crucial part of Chandrayaan-3 would be after the spacecraft reaches Moon.

Source: TimesofIndia