Chandrayaan-3 launch: Significance of India's moon mission. When will it reach the moon?
Chandrayaan-2 where scientists aim to demonstrate various capabilities including reaching the orbit of the moon, making a soft landing on the lunar surface using a lander, and a rover coming out of the lander to study the surface of the moon. According to scientists, after the lift-off at 2.35 pm on Friday, around 16 minutes after lift-off, the propulsion module is expected to get separated from the rocket and would orbit the earth for about 5-6 times in an elliptical cycle with 170 km closest and 36,500 km farthest from earth moving towards the lunar orbit.
ISRO scientists have tentatively scheduled a soft landing on the lunar surface expected to take place by August 23-24 making India join elite nations to achieve the feat. Chandrayaan-3’s development phase commenced in January 2020 with plans to launch it somewhere in 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused delays in the development process. Then Prime Minister, the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced the Chandrayaan program in 2003.
Chandrayaan-1 took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in 2008, but it crashed near the lunar South Pole -- confirming the presence of water molecules on the Moon's surface. In 2019, Chandrayaan-2 launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.
Vikram Lander was separated while orbiting the moon in a 100kms lunar polar orbit, however, communication from the lander to the ground stations was lost at an altitude of 2.1 km from the surface of the moon. The significance of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, unlike its unsuccessful predecessor, is that the Propulsion Module has a payload -- SHAPE -- Spectro- polarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth to study Earth from lunar orbit, according to PTI reports. ISRO said the SHAPE
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