Somanat said the Chandrayaan-3 mission is “almost ready” and that final assembly and testing are largely over, with only a few tests remaining. “‘Chandrayaan 3’ will be launched by the LVM3 launch vehicle in June next year, it is not a replica of ‘Chandrayaan 2’, the engineering details are very different. We made it more powerful so that it would not Another problem.”
Based on the Chandrayaan-2 lander, ISRO has added more safeguards to the Chandrayaan-3. “There are a lot of new changes, the landing legs are stronger, the spacecraft is equipped with better instruments. In case of failure, other equipment will take over.” Somanat said, this will give the lander a stronger “Self-rescue” ability.
India launched its first lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, in October 2008. The probe entered lunar orbit in November of the same year, and obtained a large number of images and detection data. However, due to technical problems and equipment failures, Chandrayaan 1, which was originally planned to work for two years, finally lost contact in August 2009 and only operated for 10 months.
In 2019, India launched the Chandrayaan-2 probe to attempt a soft landing on the lunar surface, but this mission ended in failure. The lander “Vikram” successfully separated from the orbiter, but failed to reduce its speed smoothly in the second stage, and finally lost contact with the ground when it was 2.1 kilometers away from the lunar surface and crashed on the lunar surface.
In July 2019, India’s “Chandrayaan 2” was launched. Picture from the Indian Space Research Organization
On the basis of these two lunar exploration missions, the Indian government approved the Chandrayaan-3 lunar exploration mission in January 2020, and plans to challenge a soft landing again at the same landing site. The mission was originally slated to launch in 2021, but ISRO had to push back the launch date several times as the project’s schedule was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the Hindustan Times, the improved Chandrayaan-3 will also be a “pioneer” of India’s “Gaganyaan” manned space mission. Currently, ISRO hopes to send Indian astronauts into space by the end of 2024, but the schedule of this plan still depends on the results of six test missions including safety system testing and unmanned test vehicles.