New Delhi: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced Thursday that its next moon mission, Chandrayaan-3, will be launched at 2.35 pm on 14 July.
It will be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
This is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface, the space body has said.
The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till 100 km lunar orbit.
ISRO chairman S. Somanath said Monday that this mission would be able to achieve a soft-landing on the moon. “That’s going to be the achievement,” Somanath told reporters.
Chandrayaan-2, which was launched on 22 July, 2019, had failed to soft-land a robotic module named Vikram on the moon’s surface.
A successful landing would have made history for India as it would have been the world’s first lunar landing near its unexplored South Pole.
Chandrayaan-1 was launched on 22 October, 2008 – a major boost to the country’s indigenous space programme – to survey the lunar surface over a two-year period, and to produce a complete map of the chemical composition at the surface and three-dimensional topography.
At a G20 meeting of Space Economy leaders in Bengaluru on Thursday, Somanath said the landing on the moon would be in the last week of August. “The date is decided by when there is sunrise on the moon. Sunlight has to be there when it is landing… There are 15 days of sunlight and none for the next 15 days. For one location. We have to land on the first day of the 15-day sunlight period. Then we can have light for 15 days. If everything goes well, the date will be 23 August. If it gets delayed, we will attempt a landing a month later,” Somanath added.
Also read: Aim is to achieve soft-landing on the moon, says ISRO chief on impending Chandrayaan-3 launch