Chandrayaan's Vajpayee connection: When former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee changed name of India's Moon mission

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Deccan Chronicle in 2019. Kasturirangan had also told the daily, "It took four years to plan the mission, and another four years to implement it." In November 2003, government had approved ISRO's proposal for the inaugural India's moon mission. During India's 56th Independece Day in 2003, Vajpayee had said, “Our country is now ready to fly high in the field of science.

I am pleased to announce that India will send her spacecraft to the moon by 2008. It is being named Chandrayaan." Chandrayaan, which means "moon craft" in Sanskrit, has been built on a budget of just under ₹615 crore. The approved cost of Chandrayaan-3 is ₹250 crores (excluding launch vehicle cost).

Meanwhile, Russia's first moon mission in 47 years failed over the weekend when its Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon. Prior a private Japanese space startup, ispace failed an attempted lunar landing in April. Meanwhile, The live telecast of the landing operations at Mission Operation Complex (MOX) will begin at 1720 IST.

Live broadcast of the landing will be available on the ISRO website, its YouTube channel, Facebook, and public broadcaster DD National TV from 17:27 IST on Aug 23, 2023. A post on ISRO's official handle on X, formerly Twitter, read, "All set to initiate the Automatic Landing Sequence (ALS). Awaiting the arrival of the Lander Module (LM) at the designated point, around 17:44 Hrs.

IST. Upon receiving the ALS command, the LM activates the throttleable engines for powered descent. "The mission operations team will keep confirming the sequential execution of commands.