The spacecraft of India’s third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, was integrated with its the heavy lift launch vehicle LMV3 at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Wednesday (July 5), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said. This lunar mission is set to be launched later this month.
“Today, at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, the encapsulated assembly containing Chandrayaan-3 is mated with LVM3,” ISRO said in a tweet.
News agency ANI earlier had quoted ISRO’s chairman S Somnath as announcing that the space agency is planning to kaunch the new spacecraft for its third lunar mission between July 13-19.
“We will be able to do a soft landing on the moon. The launch day is July 13, it can go upto 19th,” Somnath had said in an interview with ANI last month.
Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2. This mission aims to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.
Meanwhile, last year in October, while addressing a press conference the space agency’s chief has revealed that Chandrayaan-3 mission is ready and is likely to launch in June 2023.
“Chandrayaan-3 is almost ready. Final integration and testing are almost complete. Still, some more tests are pending, so we want to do it a little later. There were two slots available one in February and another in June. We would like to take June (2023) slot for the launch,” Somnath had said in the press conference.
Notably, India’s second mission to the moon – Chandrayaan-2 was launched from Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota on July 22, 2019. However, the space mission failed in the early hours of September 6, 2023 as the Vikram lunar lander crashed on the Moon due to which communication from the lander to the ground stations was lost.
(With inputs from agencies)