India’s Chandrayaan-3 to Launch in July, Confirms ISRO Chairman

India’s third mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-3, will launch in July, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman S Somnath. The mission will demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface, as well as develop and demonstrate new technologies required for interplanetary missions.

Chandrayaan-3 Mission Objectives

The Chandrayaan-3 mission aims to achieve three objectives: to demonstrate safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, to demonstrate rover roving on the moon, and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments. The mission consists of an indigenous lander module, a propulsion module, and a rover.

Propulsion Module and Scientific Payloads

The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till 100 km lunar orbit, according to ISRO. The propulsion module has Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and Polari metric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit. 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 have scientific payloads to carry out experiments on the lunar surface.

Chandrayaan-1 and -2

The Chandrayaan series is an ongoing lunar space exploration program of the ISRO. Chandrayaan-1, the first lunar probe of ISRO, in 2008-09 found water on the moon. The Chandrayaan-2 was launched in July 2019 and successfully inserted into orbit in August 2019. However, minutes its lander crash-landed on the moon after losing communication with the ground stations.

ISRO Chairman S Somnath congratulated the whole ISRO team after the successful launch of NVS-01. He also appreciated the fact that the mission was accomplished after doing the rectifications after suffering a debacle during the last mission. The ISRO Chairman also thanked the authorisation of the GSLV launch despite a failure during the last attempt. In the coming months, ISRO is planning to launch PSLV, GSLV Mark-3, and the test vehicle of the Gaganyan mission.