When will Chandrayaan-3 launch? Govt provides major update on ISRO's upcoming moon mission

Chandrayaan-3 is the third planned trip to space by the Indian Space Research Organisation. It is currently under development stages and is slated to be launched to the moon by next year. Currently, a lot of new information has been released about the Chandrayaan-3 launch date and launch vehicle. Union minister, Jitendra Singh informed everyone that the Chandrayaan-3 launch mission has been postponed because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Jitendra Singh is the Minister of State in charge of the Department of Space and he recently responded to a question in Lok Sabha about this mission. 

When Will Chandrayaan-3 launch?

As per a report by PTI, Union minister Jitendra Singh recently confirmed that the launch of this mission has been rescheduled because of the lockdown that was imposed to curb the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. He added that "Chandrayaan-3 is likely to be launched during the third quarter of 2022 assuming normal workflow henceforth.” This is mostly because the realisation of Chandrayaan-3 involves various processes like the finalisation of configuration, subsystems realisation, integration, spacecraft level detailed testing and a number of special tests that can help to evaluate the system performance on Earth. Singh confirmed that “The realisation progress was hampered due to the COVID-19 pandemic.” 

More about ISRO's missions 

The government has managed to work on this project by adopting the work from home during the lockdown. The government also confirmed that the Chandrayaan-3 realisation resumed after the commencement of the unlock period and is currently in a mature stage of realisation. The Chandrayaan-3 launch vehicle has been finalised and the astronauts will be loaded in a GSLV Mark III for this mission.

Before this mission, Chandrayaan-2 was launched back in 2019. That rocket consisted of the lunar orbiter, the Vikram lander, and the Pragyan lunar rover. But the rocket lost contact with Earth just 2.1km away from the surface of the Moon. These were supposed to land at the lunar south pole to fulfil the main objective to observe the water molecules frozen in the darker regions of the Moon. 

Apart from this, ISRO is currently working towards launching its Gaganyaan mission in December. This is going to be an unmanned flight that focuses on making the Indian human spaceflight programme capable of sending humans to low earth orbit. This mission has also seen some delay because the productions had to be stopped to follow the lockdown. No other information has been released about these two scheduled ISRO missions. 

With inputs from PTI