After a failed first attempt in 2019, India is trying for the second time to land on the moon. The launch vehicle has been successfully launched. The unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 is now on its way to the Moon and is scheduled to land there in August.
With the aim of achieving a successful moon landing, India once again launched a rocket in the direction of the moon. This was shown by live images from the Indian Space Agency, ISRO, from the Satish Dhawan space station in Andhra Pradesh.
With the unmanned Chandrayaan-3 mission, India wants to explore the moon’s rarely explored south pole. First, however, a controlled lunar landing, which is scheduled for August 23 or 24, must work. So far, only the USA, USSR and China have been able to achieve such a soft landing. Chandrayaan means “the chariot of the moon” in Sanskrit.
The first attempt failed
In 2019, the first attempt failed. During the Chandrayaan-2 mission, the lander crashed into the surface of Earth’s satellite. The space agency later informed Parliament in New Delhi that there were problems with deceleration during the approach to the moon.
Previously, India had already pursued another mission to the moon: the first lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, was launched in 2008 and orbited the moon — without landing on it. With the current mission, she said, lunar orbit should be reached after about 15 to 20 days.
The LVM3 launch vehicle carried the lunar lander into space.
The Indian space program began in the 1960s. In the early decades, the focus was primarily on launching specific satellites into space at low cost. The country now has more ambitious goals – and recently, during a visit by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to US President Joe Biden, increased cooperation in space travel was announced.
