India was lauded last year all over the world for launching the much talked about lunar exploration mission Chandrayaan-1, which was also developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation successfully. The mission comprised of a lunar orbiter, Vikram lander & the Pragyan lunar rover, all of which was developed in India. After launching the mission at the Satish Dhawan space centre on July, 22 last year the lander at 2.1km altitude deviated from its intended trajectory losing communication. ISRO had also confirmed that they will be re-attempting a soft-landing in November 2020. However, recent news says that the launch has been delayed until 2021 as the works for the Chandrayaan-3 project is ongoing.

Chairman of ISRO K Sivan commented, “Government has approved Chandrayaan-3, the project is ongoing. However, the project might take 14-16 months, which could result in works being pushed to 2021.”

Chandrayaan-2’s Vikram lander had crashed at the lunar surface due to hard landing, which is making Chandrayaan-3 the successor of the Chandrayaan-2 with the attempt to soft-land at the lunar space. It will comprise of a lander, propulsion module & a rover. The list of scientific instruments along with the information on the functioning of Chandrayaan-3 is yet not updated by ISRO’s website, which will be taken to the Moon. The space agency already has formed the Chandrayaan-3 project team & the mission work is also going on smoothly, according to Sivan.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission has an estimated cost of over 600 crores as compared to Chandrayaan-2, which had a value of 960 crores. Sivan further explained that 250 crores will be given for lander, propulsion module & rover & 350 crores are for the launch of the mission, making it a total of 615 crores. Sivan said that a second spaceport will also be initiated at Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu for which a land has also been acquired.

Another ambitious mission of India named ‘Gaganyaan’ is also going to be launched in 2020. ISRO is working on both Chandrayaan-3 & Gaganyaan missions all at the same time. For Gaganyaan, an advisory committee has been created which has identified four astronauts, whose training will commence in the third week of January 2020 in Russia.