New Delhi: India’s next moon mission Chandrayaan-3 will be able to achieve a soft-landing on the moon, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman S. Somanath said Monday.
“That’s going to be the achievement,” Somanath told reporters, confirming that the launch was set for 13 July, though it could go up to the 19th.
This is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.
Chandrayaan-3 will be launched by the Launch Vehicle Mark-III from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota at 2:30 pm on 13 July.
The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till 100 km lunar orbit.
Chandrayaan-2 was launched on 22 July, 2019 to map and study the variations in lunar surface composition, as well as the location and abundance of lunar water.
However, the orbiter’s attempt to soft-land a robotic module named Vikram on the moon’s surface failed on 7 September, 2019. 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.