ISRO to Launch Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya-L1 in July, Says Official

An official said on Saturday that the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) plans to launch the third edition of India’s lunar mission and the first solar mission in July.

The space agency aims to launch Chandrayaan-3 in July, followed by Aditya-L1, said an Isro official with knowledge of the project’s progress. “We are completing all the tests and hope we can keep up with the schedule,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

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Chandrayaan, India’s lunar exploration program, is Isro’s ongoing series of space missions. The first lunar rocket, Chandrayaan-1, was launched in 2008 and successfully entered lunar orbit.

Chandrayaan-2 was successfully launched and put into lunar orbit in 2019, but the lander crashed onto the lunar surface while skidding while attempting to land on September 6, 2019, due to a software glitch.

Chandrayaan-3 consists of the original lander, thrust module and rover. Its goals include developing and demonstrating new technologies needed for interplanetary missions. The probe will have the ability to soft-land at specific locations and deploy the rover, which will carry out a chemical analysis of the lunar surface while in motion.

Aditya-L1 is India’s first science mission to study the Sun. Previously, this mission was designated as Aditya-1 with a single payload 400kg class satellite, VELC, and was planned to launch into a low earth orbit of 800km.

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However, because a satellite placed in a coronal orbit around the first Lagrangian point (L1) of the Sun-Earth system has the primary advantage of displaying the Sun without a sunset or eclipse, mission Aditya-1 has been renamed Aditya-L1 mission., which will be included into orbit around the L1 point, 1.5 million km from Earth towards the Sun.