Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh: India’s Chandrayaan-3 lifts off successfully from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota as per scheduled launch time. Journey to moon is estimated to take about month and landing is expected on August 23, 2023.
If successful, the mission will make India the fourth country to achieve a controlled landing on the moon, after Russia, the United States, and China.
The rocket is nicknamed as `Bahubali’ as like the well built hero in the successful film lifting a heavy Lingam, the rocket carries the 3.8-tonne Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft. “Chandrayaan-3 scripts a new chapter in India’s space odyssey,” tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is currently visiting France.
The journey from Earth to the moon for the spacecraft is estimated to take about a month and the landing is expected on August 23. Upon landing, it will operate for one lunar day, which is approximately 14 Earth days. One day on the Moon is equal to 14 days on Earth.
The Chandrayaan-3 will have three major components — a lander, a rover, and a propulsion model. It will be using the Orbiter from Chandrayaan-2 which still exists in the lunar atmosphere.
In a first, India’s mooncraft ‘Vikram’ will land in the South Pole of the moon, where water molecules have been found. The finding, made during India’s first moon mission in 2008, had startled the world.
The latest iteration of the Chandrayaan comes four years after an earlier attempt failed, with the ground crew losing contact moments before landing.
The ISRO’s second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 failed while attempting to land in 2019. However, to avoid past failures, ISRO has corporate a series of changes in the upcoming mission.
