Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairman S Somanath said on Wednesday that Chandrayaan-3, India’s third lunar mission and the first solar mission Aditya L1 (first solar mission Aditya L1) will likely be launched by mid-2023.
He was delivering the inaugural address on “Indian Capability for Space and Planetary Exploration” at the 4th Indian Planetary Science Conference held at the Physical Research Laboratory here.
Somnath said that Chandrayaan-3 Craft is completely ready. It is fully integrated. Of course, some improvements are being done and we are building a lot of confidence in the mission through a lot of simulations and tests etc.
He said that Aditya-L1, India’s first solar mission is going to be a very unique solar observation capability, the instruments for which have already been delivered and ISRO is in the process of integrating them into the satellite. Is.
Somnath said that I am also eagerly waiting for its (Aditya-L1) launch, probably by the middle of this year, and I am sure that we will make this mission a grand success.
According to ISRO, Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-up mission to Chandrayaan-2, which demonstrated end-to-end capability in safe landing and orbiting on the lunar surface. This includes the lander and rover configurations.
Speaking on the Chandrayaan-3 mission, Somnath said its structure would be similar to that of Chandrayaan-2, with an orbiter, a lander and a rover.
Of course, the orbiter does not have all the payloads that Chandrayaan-2 has. It will carry only a small payload. But the primary objective is to land the lander by taking it into the Moon’s orbit.
He said that the primary objective of Chandrayaan-3 is to have a precise landing. A lot of work is being done for that today, including building new tools, building better algorithms, taking care of failure modes, etc.
While these aspects of the mission are currently being strengthened, Somnath said the scientific objectives are more or less the same as previous lunar missions.
Let us hope that this time Chandrayaan-3 will do a good job of landing and surely the rover will come out and explore the lunar surface at least for a lunar day, which is going to be very interesting indeed.
Regarding Aditya L1, he said that it will approach the Lagrangian point L1, which is a vantage point where the Sun can be observed continuously without disturbance over long periods of time.
The ISRO chief said that this is going to be a very unique solar observation capability that we are building. The instruments for this have already been delivered and we are in the process of integrating these instruments into the satellite.
