India shifted launch of its Chandrayaan-3 moon lander to avoid space objects The liftoff time for India’s historic Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander was shifted four seconds to avoid close approaches to other space objects.

The delay was only 4 seconds. This time. But with 30,000 trackable objects in orbit and more every day, this is going to become commonplace and the delays are going to be worse.

    • smallaubergine@kbin.social
      7·
      9 months ago

      4 seconds? Usually launch windows are in hours and days right? Unless you have barely any fuel margin and you’re trying to hit a very very specific orbit I can’t imagine 4 seconds being a huge issue. But I’m no orbital dynamicist

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
        6·
        9 months ago

        It’s not a huge deal, and if it were then the mission is already balanced on a knife’s edge and shouldn’t have been designed that way in the first place. There are plenty of technical problems that could cause a 4-second delay.