The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, successfully launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Friday at 1435 local time.

ISRO's LVM3 launch vehicle is carrying a lander and rover to 100km lunar orbit. At the time of writing, the craft had been placed in precise orbit and the health of the spacecraft was reported as normal.

The spacecraft will take 42 days to journey to the Moon, after which it is scheduled to land near the lunar south pole where it will conduct experiments for 14 Earth days.

Should it succeed, India will become the fourth country after the USSR, USA and China to successfully soft land a mission on the Moon. The most impressive part is that the mission operates on a shoestring budget of $74.5 million. Chandraayan-1 reached the lunar surface in 2008, but it was an impact probe.

India has tried to soft land on the Moon before with Chandrayaan-2 in 2019, but a software glitch caused the lander to crash. The current iteration of the mission incorporates lessons learned from the failed mission, such as stronger legs, more cameras to coordinate descent approach, and other features.

The latest version also includes the Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) instrument aboard the propulsion module, which not only studies Earth, but can look for habitable exoplanets elsewhere.

The propulsion module will stay in orbit acting as a communication relay satellite for the lander and rover.

An ISRO official
said that India would be increasing the amount of launches of its LVM3 vehicle to meet satellite demands.

Chandrayaan-3 is the seventh mission carried by LVM3 and the third launch over the past year. According to ISRO, the launch vehicle has a 100 percent success rate. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2023/07/14/india_chandrayaan_3_en_route/