On Sunday, Jitendra Singh, the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology, announced that the upcoming launch of Chandrayaan-3 from Sriharikota this week will establish India as the fourth country to successfully land its spacecraft on the lunar surface.
He said that key space-related agreements signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the US show that nations that began their space exploration efforts long before India now view it as an equal partner.
“India can no longer wait to be left behind in its march to the Moon,” the minister added, citing the exponential leap in our space knowledge during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration.
Chandrayaan-3, according to Singh, is a follow-up mission to Chandrayaan-2 and is intended to show off India’s prowess in soft landing and roaming on the Moon’s Lunar surface. He said that the perfect execution of the challenging mission profile was needed for the spacecraft to enter the Moon’s orbit.
“After the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the surface of the Moon, the rover, which has six wheels, will come out and is expected to work for 14 days on the Moon. With the support of multiple cameras on the rover, we will be able to receive images,” he stated according to an official release by Ministry.
Jitendra Singh gave full credit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for creating an environment that supports space workers and making ground-breaking decisions like opening the sector to Public Private Partnership (PPP). Based on the sector’s current growth trajectory, Singh said, India’s space sector could be a $1 trillion US economy in the years to come.
Chandrayaan-3 mission to demonstrate threefold objectives on Lunar surface: Minister Jitendra Singh
Jitendra Singh went on to say, “The primary objectives of Chandrayaan-3 mission are threefold, to demonstrate Safe and Soft Landing on Lunar Surface, to demonstrate Rover roving on the moon and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.”
The minister recalled that the first of the Chandrayaan missions, Chandrayaan-1, is credited with discovering the existence of water on the surface of the Moon. This discovery was a major breakthrough for the entire world, and even the most prestigious space agencies, like the US’s NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), were fascinated by this finding and used the inputs for their subsequent experiments.
He claimed that Chandrayyan-3 will function at an elevated level. He also said that ISRO’s Launch Vehicle Mark-3 will be used to launch the spacecraft.
Chandrayaan-3 underwent changes to increase the robustness of Lander: Jitendra Singh
“There is tremendous excitement across the country about the launch of Chandrayaan-3, particularly because Chandrayaan-2 Mission could not yield the desired results because of a lapse just about 13 minutes after Spacecraft began its descent on September 6, 2019. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was personally present at Sriharikota to witness the event.”
The Minister further said, “A successor to Chandrayaan-2, Chandrayaan-3 has undergone a few changes to increase the robustness of the Lander. He said, all these modifications have been subject to exhaustive ground tests and simulations through test beds.”
“The Lander and Rover module of Chandrayaan-3 is also configured with payloads that would provide data to the scientific community on various properties of Lunar Soil and rocks including its chemical and elemental composition,” Minister Jitendra Singh said in the statement.
