TIRUPATI: Chandrayaan-3, the third Indian moon mission, will be launched on July 14, wherein the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will attempt to soft-land the lander and the rover on the lunar surface on August 23 or 24.
The spacecraft was moved to the launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota of Tirupati district on Thursday. The lander is contained inside the rover and packed in the top stages of the rocket. It will lift off at 2.35 pm on July 14, Friday. The mission will be launched by the Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM3), earlier known as the GSLV.
The mission life of the lander is one lunar day, which is equal to 14 Earth days. “The date (for soft-landing) is decided based on when there is sunrise on the moon,” an Isro official said.
The mission will not have an orbiter, which was an important feature of the first two Chandrayaan missions.
During Chandrayaan-2, a glitch with the guidance software led to the lander, titled Vikram, crashing into the moon’s surface on September 6, 2019, and destroying the rover, Pragyan, which was supposed to explore the lunar surface.
Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-up mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.
According to Isro, Chandrayaan-3 aims to demonstrate key technologies required for interplanetary missions by soft-landing the lander, releasing the rover to move about on the moon and conducting in-situ scientific experiments.
