India will be launching Chandrayaan-3 in the first half of next year.
Bengaluru: In the first half of the next year 2021, India will be launching Chandrayaan-3, which will be India’s third moon mission.
None other than Union minister Jitendra Singh, a minister of state in the Prime Minister’s office revealed this fact in a written response in the Lok Sabha.
He also said four biological and two physical science experiments related to microgravity will be conducted during the Gaganyaan project, India's manned mission to space.
Singh said, “The revised configuration takes care of the robustness in design, capacity enhancement for mission flexibility and at the same time retain the heritage of Chandrayaan-II to the extent possible. The tentative launch schedule for Chandrayaan-III is the first half of 2021. Chandrayaan-III mission has been configured based on the lessons learnt from Chadrayaan II.”
In the initial days of the new year (2020) Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K Sivan had said that the central government had approved Chandrayaan-3 and the project is ongoing.
"The government has approved Chandrayaan-3, the project is ongoing. The land acquisition for a second spaceport has been initiated and the port will be in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu," said Sivan.
He had expressed hopes that Chandrayaan-3 would take off in November, but now it is confirmed it will happen next year.
He had also recalled the achievements of ISRO in the year that passed and had outlined the focus areas of 2019.
"In 2019, our strategy mainly was the expansion program, we wanted to expand ISRO horizontally. The second strategy adopted in 2019 was the capacity building and outreach program. The third one is reduction of the physical work in ISRO. We have also constituted Gaganyan advisory committee," Sivan said.
ISRO chairman had further added that a second vehicle building had also been inaugurated to increase the number of launches and stated that ISRO is expanding its horizon of activity.
"We brought the high school children to ISRO to train them for two weeks on space, science and technology. Another major activity we initiated is that we want the PSLV to be produced by the industry," said Sivan.
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