Chandrayaan-3, India's third lunar mission, will be launched on July 13 at 2:30 pm, officials at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced on Wednesday. ISRO chairman S Somanath had earlier said that the launch date of the third Chandrayaan mission could be anywhere between July 12 and 19 if tests go as planned.
Chandrayaan-3 will be launched by the Launch Vehicle Mark-III from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, according to the official announcement.
Notably, this is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. It has a lander and rover configuration.
The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till 100 km lunar orbit. It has a Spectro-Polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth payload to study the spectral and polarimetric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit.
