What Is Chandrayaan 3? Launch Date, Time And Objectives

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for the launch of its ambitious Chandrayaan-3 mission launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota on July 14.

Chandrayaan-3 mission is due to be launched at 2.35 pm on July 14, with the lander expected to soft-land on the surface of the Moon on August 23 or 24.

Chandrayaan 3 aims "to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. To date, only three countries have successfully soft-landed a craft on the moon, the governments of the Soviet Union, the United States and China.

What is Chandrayaan 3?

Chandrayaan-3 is the third lunar exploration mission planned by ISRO. It is a follow-on mission to Candrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. It consists of Lander and Rover configurations. It will be launched by LVM3 from SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota.

The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till 100 km lunar orbit. The propulsion module has a Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and Polari metric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit.

According to the ISRO, Chandrayaan-3 consists of an indigenous Lander module (LM), Propulsion module (PM) and a Rover with an objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for Interplanetary missions. 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. The main function of PM is to carry the LM from launch vehicle injection to the final lunar 100 km circular polar orbit and separate the LM from PM.

The launcher identified for Chandrayaan-3 is GSLV-Mk3 which will place the integrated module in an Elliptic Parking Orbit (EPO) of size ~170 x 36500 km.

Objectives of Chandrayaan-3 are:

• To demonstrate Safe and Soft Landing on Lunar Surface
• To demonstrate Rover roving on the moon and
• To conduct in-situ scientific experiments.