Accident averted: Chandrayaan-2 and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter could have collided, changed polar orbit to avoid

India’s Chandrayaan-2 avoided colliding with NASA’s Moon Orbiter. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said that in October, Chandrayaan-2 and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter had come very close to colliding. To avoid colliding with each other, its polar orbit was changed.

change in polar orbit
ISRO had changed the polar orbit of the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter to avoid a collision. Indeed, both orbit the Moon in almost the same polar orbit and hence the two spacecraft come closer to each other at the lunar poles. Indian Orbiter has been orbiting the Moon for the last two years.

Both the agencies were keeping an eye on this
According to ISRO, both the agencies started analyzing the situation a week ago and came to the conclusion that on October 20, the radial distance between the two orbiters will be less than 100 meters while the closest approach distance will be around 3 kilometers. .

CAM is needed to reduce such risk
It was told by ISRO that both the agencies (ISRO and NASA) agreed that Collision Avoidance Maneuver (CAM) is needed to reduce such risk. After orbit determination with tracking, the data confirmed that such a situation would not occur with LRO in future.

first time such an opportunity came
It is common for space agencies to require collision avoidance maneuvers to reduce the risk of collisions caused by satellite debris and other space objects in Earth orbit. ISRO regularly monitors such important close distance objects. However, this is the first time such a step has to be taken for an important space exploration mission of ISRO.