Isro plans a repeat of second moon mission with Chandrayaan-3
02 Jan 2020
Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is looking to make amends for the lost opportunity of Chandrayaan-2 with another similar mission Chandrayaan-3, reports citing the agency’s chief K Sivan said on Wednesday.
Sivan said India’s third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3 is on and has been approved by the government. All activities related to the third lunar mission are going on smoothly and the Chandrayaan-3 mission is slated to launch in 2021, he said.
Addressing a press conference in Bangalore, the Isro chief said that Chandrayaan-3’s configuration will be similar to that of its predecessor, Chandrayaan-2. This means that the Chandrayaan-3 will also have a lander and a rover with a propulsion module.
Sivan also said that there will be more than space 25 missions this year and that the Chandrayaan-3 will not affect other satellite programmes.
On the landing location of the Chandrayaan-3, K Sivan said that Isro is planning for landing at the same location as the Chandrayaan-2, the lander of which crash-landed on the moon surface just moments before it was supposed to soft-land.
On the cost of the upcoming Chandrayaan-3 mission, Sivan said the lander and rover of the third lunar mission will cost approximately Rs250 crore and that the entire cost of the mission will be around Rs715 crore, far less than that of Chandrayan-2.
The total cost of the Chandrayaan-2 mission was Rs960 crore.
Sivan also said that four candidates have been selected for `Gaganyaan’ mission and that preparations for the manned space mission are going on simultaneously with the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
Gaganyaan is an Indian crewed orbital spacecraft that is intended to send 3 astronauts to space for a minimum of seven days by 2022, as part of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme.
The spacecraft, which is being developed by the Isro, consists of a service module and a crew module, collectively known as the Orbital Module.
Speaking about the possible reasons that led to the crash landing of Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander, sivan said that while the rough breaking phase went as it was supposed to go, the velocity was not reduced in the second phase due to which, in the third phase, the lander went out of control leading to a hard landing.
Union minister Jitendra Singh also on Tuesday had said that India will launch Chandrayaan-3 in 2020 and had asserted that the mission will cost less than the previous lunar mission, Chanrayaan-2.
Singh, who is the minister of state in the prime minister's office, had said it is wrong to term Chandrayaan-2 as a disappointment since it was India's maiden attempt to land on the lunar surface and no country could do so in its first attempt.
"Yes, the lander and rover mission will mostly likely happen in 2020. However, as I have said before, the Chandrayaan-2 mission cannot be called a failure as we have learnt a lot from it. There is no country in the world that has landed on its first attempt. The US took several attempts. But we will not need so many attempts," Singh said.
He added that the experience gathered from Chandrayaan-2 and available infrastructure will bring down the cost of Chandrayaan-3.