Chandrayaan-3: ISRO sets November 2020 deadline for new moon mission

Bengaluru, Nov 14: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which almost landed a probe successfully on Moon in its first attempt in September 2019 is planning for yet another mission Chandrayaan 3 to safely land a vehicle on the moon. The deadline of the said project is said to be November 2020 and will soon be submitted to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The mission will kick start soon after getting permission from the Centre.

Besides this, ISRO has lined up programmes like Gaganyaan, another mission to the Moon, Venus next year, a solar mission (Aditya L1) and setting up a space station.

Under Chandrayaan-3 mission, ISRO will deploy Jaxa lander and rover to the south pole of the Moon for exploring the region further. Both Chandrayaan 1 and 2 were sent to the same region.

The work on the project is said to be in full flow and the ISRO has thus far looked at 10 specific aspects of the mission, including landing site selection, absolute navigation and local navigation. The ISRO teams also looked at a detachable module to carry fuel, tentatively called the 'propulsion module,' which will help take the landing module to the lunar orbit. The space organisation might also consider reducing the number of manoeuvres around the Earth to just three or four.

In the Chandrayaan-2 mission, one of the components was a lander called Vikram and it crashlanded on September 6, after a 46-day journey. The Vikram lander which is lying on the lunar surface has not responded yet. Efforts are being made to restore communication with the lander.