The Chandrayaan-3 mission is likely to be launched late next year, Minister of State for Space Jitendra Singh said in a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. “Chandrayaan-3 is likely to be launched during the third quarter of 2022, assuming normal work flow henceforth,” he said.
The Chandrayaan-2 mission, launched in July 2019, was scheduled to be an effort aimed at landing a rover on the Lunar South Pole. It was sent aboard the country’s most powerful geosynchronous launch vehicle, the GSLV-Mk 3.
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However, the lander Vikram, instead of a controlled landing, ended up crash-landing on September 7, 2019, and stymied the effort at having the rover Pragyaan successfully travel on the surface of the moon. Had the mission been successful, it would have been the first time a country landed its rover on the moon on its maiden attempt.
The Chandrayaan-3, a follow-up of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, involves “various processes, including finalisation of configuration, subsystems realisation, integration, spacecraft level detailed testing and a number of special tests to evaluate the system performance on earth. Progress was hampered due to COVID-19 pandemic. However, all works that were possible in work from home mode were taken up even during lockdown periods. Chandrayaan-3 ... is in matured stage of realisation,” Mr. Singh said.
The COVID-19 lockdown has hit several projects of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), including Gaganyaan, the country’s first manned space mission.
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