Chandrayaan-3 launch on July 14: Isro
HT first reported on May 22 that the launch window for the Chandrayaan-3 mission was opening on July 12
New Delhi The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Thursday confirmed that India’s third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, will be launched on July 14 at 2.25pm from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
“If the launch takes place on July 14, we will be landing on the moon by August 23-24. We want the landing to happen on the first lunar day so that we get around a fortnight to work. If these dates do not work then we will have to wait another month and land in September,” Isro chief Somanath said in Bengaluru.
HT first reported on May 22 that the launch window for the Chandrayaan-3 mission was opening on July 12.
The journey to the launchpad of the Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM-3), now mated with Chandrayaan-3, also began on Thursday.
The Chandrayaan programme, or the Indian lunar exploration programme, is an ongoing series of outer space mission by Isro. The first moon rocket, Chandrayaan-1, was launched in 2008, and was successfully inserted into lunar orbit.
Chandrayaan-2 was successfully launched and inserted into lunar orbit in 2019, but its lander “crash-landed” on the moon’s surface when it deviated from its trajectory while attempting to land on September 6, 2019, due to a software glitch.
Chandrayaan-3, which aims to make a successful landing on the lunar surface, consists of an indigenous lander module, a propulsion module, and a rover. Its objectives include developing and demonstrating new technologies required for interplanetary missions. The lander will have the capability to “soft land” at a specified lunar site and deploy the rover, which will carry out in-situ chemical analysis of the lunar surface during the course of its mobility.
The lander and the rover will have scientific payloads to carry out experiments on the lunar surface.
Chandrayaan-3 will be launched over LVM-3, which was previously known as Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk-III (GSLV-3). The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till 100km lunar orbit.
In May, the space agency started the assembly process for the payloads for Chandrayaan-3, a move to ensure that the space agency is able to stick to the launch date of July, senior officials from the department of space said. After that, the assembly was completed at Isro’s UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in Bangalore.