Launch of India’s Moon Mission, Chandrayaan-3, Postponed

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which announced last week that its highly awaited lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, would launch on July 13, has delayed the launch by one day.

The launch has been rescheduled for July 14 at 2.35 p.m. at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

ISRO tweeted, “Announcing the launch of Chandrayaan-3:🚀LVM3-M4/Chandrayaan-3 🛰️Mission: The launch is now scheduled for 📆July 14, 2023, at 2:35 pm IST from SDSC, Sriharikota”, through its official Twitter handle.

This is India’s third moon mission, following the Chandrayaan-2 mission in 2019. While that mission orbited the moon, the Vikram lander experienced a hard landing, preventing the rover from being deployed as intended.

The space agency reported yesterday that the encapsulated assembly housing the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft had been successfully connected with the Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (LVM3), its latest heavy-lift launch vehicle.

Chandrayaan-3 is made up of a lander module, a propulsion module, and a rover, and its goal is to develop and showcase new technologies needed for interplanetary missions. The mission’s principal goals are to demonstrate a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, to demonstrate the rover’s lunar wandering capabilities, and to conduct scientific investigations.

The mission’s lander payloads will include the Chandra Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE), which will measure thermal conductivity and temperature; the Langmuir Probe, which will estimate plasma density and its variations; and the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA), which will measure seismicity around the landing site. It will also carry a NASA passive Laser Retroreflector Array for lunar laser-ranging research.

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