The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has reached the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota from where it is most likely to be launched next month.
After the final assembly of payloads at the U.R. Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, the spacecraft for India’s third moon mission has reached Sriharikota.
“Chandrayaan-3 has already reached the launch port, preparation is going on there at Sriharikota and we do expect that sometime in July the launch can take place,” said U.R. Satellite Centre Director M. Sankaran on Thursday.
Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.
It can be recalled that the Chandrayaan-2’s Lander crashed while attempting to make a landing on the moon surface in 2019.
Mr. Sankaran said that ISRO has looked into various aspects of what happened to Chandrayaan-2 and that all precautions have been taken to ensure that the upcoming mission is successful.
Also read: Chandrayaan 3 likely to be launched in mid-2023: ISRO
“Every aspect of the mission has been looked at particularly from the experience that has happened during the Chandrayaan-2 and all possible precautions have been taken and the mood at ISRO is both upbeat as well as apprehensive,” Mr. Sankaran said.
He added that Chandrayaan-3 has been made more robust based on the experience of what happened at the time of landing for Chandrayaan-2.
“Every aspect of the mission has been strengthened and whatever is humanly possible all of them have been done. During Chandrayaan-2 time also we were very hopeful that it would be successful but that is the nature of these missions. The gap between success and failure is so narrow and so thin,“ he added.
Mr. Sankaran said that the post flight analysis of Chandrayaan-2 has given ISRO a lot of insight.
Gaganyaan
On India’s first Human Space Flight programme Gaganyaan, Mr. Sankaran said that something important connected to the mission is expected to take place at the end of the year.
Also Read | Gaganyaan: The mission to send Indians to space is on track
“Ganagayaan as you know is a very intense mission with a lot of new development and activities taking place. Many tests are happening for Gaganayaan which are not visible to the public but a lot of work is going on and we do expect that there will be something which will be visible to people during this year,” Mr. Sankaran said.
