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India to Launch New Mission To Moon July 14th
14 July 2023
EIRNS—The Chandrayaan-3, moon rover and lunar lander mission, is set for launch Friday morning, 5:05 a.m. ET. If all goes as planned, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) expects to land the lander near the Moon’s south pole on August 23. The rover it carries aboard will explore the area around the landing site for around two weeks. ISRO describes Chandrayaan-3 as “a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. It consists of Lander and Rover configuration.” It will be launched on India’s heaviest rocket, the LVM3, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India. The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration until [it reaches] a 100 km lunar orbit. It is also equipped with a “Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and Polari metric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit.” Watch ISRO’s “Curtain Raiser” on the mission to learn more about the mission, and the tasks assigned the scientific instruments aboard the orbiter, lander and rover: https://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan3_curtainraiser_video.html. Chandrayaan-2 was launched in July 2019, reached its orbit, and the orbiter and lander (with the rover aboard) were successfully deployed, but the lander’s trajectory went awry near the end of its descent, and the lander crashed. The Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, however, continues to map the lunar surface to this day. Space.com and ISRO will transmit the launch, starting approximately one hour before launch time: https://www.space.com/india-chandrayaan-3-moon-mission-launch-webcast or ISRO’s YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ueCg9bvvQ. [ggs] |