India plans to execute the Chandrayaan-3 mission this August, Minister Jitendra Singh told the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
Though the government had stated that the mission was scheduled for 2022, this is the first time that a specific month has been announced.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission is a follow-up of Chandrayaan-2 of July 2019, which aimed to land a rover on the lunar South Pole. It was sent aboard the country’s most powerful geosynchronous launch vehicle, the GSLV-Mk 3. However, lander Vikram, instead of a controlled landing, ended up crash-landing on September 7, 2019, and prevented rover Pragyaan from successfully travelling 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 in its maiden attempt.
‘Pandemic linked’ delays
“Based on the learnings from Chandrayaan-2 and suggestions made by the national level experts, the realisation of Chandrayaan-3 is in progress. Many related hardware and their special tests are successfully completed. The launch is scheduled for August 2022,” Mr. Singh said in reply to a query from Ravneet Singh and Subburaman Thirunavukkarasar who wanted to know what delayed the mission. The Minister attributed them to “pandemic linked” delays and a “reprioritisation” of projects.
The last major satellite launches by the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) were the Earth Observation Satellite-3 in August last and the Amazonia satellite in February.
The ISRO has planned 19 missions until December consisting of eight launch vehicle missions, seven spacecraft missions and four technology demonstrator missions.
The ISRO has been allotted ₹13,700 crore for this financial year, nearly ₹1,000 crore more than it spent last year. Despite the several missions planned this year, the budgeted outlay this year is less than the ₹13,949 crore allotted last year.
