“Historic mission”: India launched its rocket to the moon

Indian rocket launched into space on a historic mission to the moon. The launch of the Chandrayana 3 spacecraft from an island in southern India follows a failed attempt four years ago.

The Indian spacecraft has made its way to the far side of the Moon on a follow-up mission after failing to soft-land the craft on the lunar surface nearly four years ago, the Indian space agency said.

Chandrayaan-3, which means “lunar ship” in Sanskrit, took off from a launch pad on the island of Sriharikote in southern India, carrying an orbiter, lander and rover as part of a demonstration of India’s latest space technologies. The spacecraft will embark on a journey of just over a month before landing on the Moon’s surface later in August.

Applause and cheers swept through the mission control center at the Satish Dhawan Space Center, where engineers and scientists from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) celebrated as they watched the launch of the spacecraft. Thousands of Indians greeted him outside the mission control building and waved their national flag as they watched the spacecraft take to the skies.

“Congratulations India. Chandrayaan 3 has begun its journey to the Moon, said ISRO director Sridhara Paniker Somanath shortly after launch.

A successful landing on the moon would make India the fourth country – after the United States, the Soviet Union and China – to accomplish this feat.

The six-wheeled lander and lunar rover Chandrayaan-3 is configured with a payload that will provide the scientific community with data on the properties of lunar soil and rocks, including chemical and elemental compositions, said Dr. Jitendra Singh, junior science and technology minister.

India’s previous attempt to land a robotic spacecraft near the moon’s little-studied south pole ended in failure in 2019. It entered lunar orbit but lost contact with its lander, which crashed during its final descent to turn the rover around to look for signs of water. According to the crash analysis report submitted to ISRO, the crash was caused by a software glitch.

The $140 million mission in 2019 aimed to study permanently shadowed lunar craters thought to contain water deposits, and was confirmed by India’s Chandrayaan 1 mission in 2008.

Director of the Indian Space Research Organization Somanath said that the main goal of the mission this time was a safe and soft landing on the moon. According to him, the Indian space agency has perfected the art of flying to the moon, “but the agency is working on landing.”

Numerous countries and private companies are competing to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon’s surface. In April, a Japanese company’s spacecraft apparently crashed while trying to land on the moon. An Israeli non-profit organization tried to achieve a similar result in 2019, but its spacecraft died on impact.

With nuclear-armed India emerging as the world’s fifth-largest economy, Narendra Modi’s nationalist government is keen to showcase the country’s security and technology achievements, the Associated Press notes.

India uses research from space and other sources to solve domestic problems. Its space program has already helped develop satellite, communications and remote sensing technologies and has been used to measure groundwater levels and predict weather in a country that is prone to drought and flood cycles.

“This is a very important mission,” notes Pallava Bagla, a science writer and co-author of books on Indian space exploration, adding that India will need soft landing technology if it wants to undertake more missions to the Moon.

India is also looking forward to its first mission to the International Space Station next year in cooperation with the US under agreements between Modi and US President Joe Biden at the White House last month.

This one-time visit by an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station will not interfere with India’s own program, which aims to launch an Indian astronaut from Indian soil on an Indian rocket in late 2024, Bagla said.

India has been launching satellites for itself and other countries since the 1960s and successfully placed one into orbit around Mars in 2014.

Singh said that based on the current growth trajectory, India’s space sector could reach a trillion dollar economy in the coming years.

As of April, India has launched 424 satellites for 34 countries, including Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Over the past five years, ISRO has earned about Rs 1.1 billion (£10.2 million) from launching foreign satellites, Singh told the Indian parliament in December.