New Delhi, July 10 : Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh on Monday said that Chandrayaan-3 would be launched this week from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.
“After such a quantum rise in our space expertise under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India can no longer wait to be left behind in its march to the Moon,” the Minister said in a statement.
India will become the fourth country, if it lands the spacecraft on the surface of the Moon.
Jitendra Singh said Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission of Chandrayaan-2 and is aimed to demonstrate India’s capability in soft landing and roving on the surface of the Moon or the Lunar surface.
Chandrayaan-2 was launched on September 6, 2019 but it could not yield the desired result. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was personally present at Sriharikota to witness the event.
Elaborating further on Chandrayaan-3,Jitendra Singh said, its primary objectives are threefold – the first is to demonstrate safe and soft landing on Lunar Surface, the second is to demonstrate Rover roving on the moon and the third is to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.
The Minister said, as 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,” he said.
Talking about the recent visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to USA, he said “the USA visit was marked by significant Space related agreements indicating that the countries which had started their Space journey long before India are today looking up to India as an equal collaborator”
Giving full credit to Modi for providing an enabling environment for the Space sector, the minister said, “Based on the current trajectory of growth, India’s space sector could be a 1 Trillion US Dollar economy in the coming years”.
