India has launched its third Moon mission, aiming to be the first to land near its little-explored south pole.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft with an orbiter, lander and a rover lifted off at 14:35 on Friday (09:05 GMT) from Sriharikota space centre.
The lander is due to reach the Moon on 23-24 August.
Thousands of people watched the launch from the viewer’s gallery and commentators described the sight of the rocket “soaring in the sky” as “majestic”. The lift off was greeted with cheers and loud applause from the crowds and the scientists.
“Chandrayaan-3 has begun its journey towards the Moon,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath said in his first comments following the successful lift off. “Our launch vehicle has put the Chandrayaan on the precise orbit around the Earth.” Isro tweeted that “the health of the spacecraft is normal”.
It comes 13 years after the country’s first moon mission in 2008, which carried out “the first and most detailed search for water on the lunar surface and established the Moon has an atmosphere during daytime”, said Mylswamy Annadurai, project director of Chandrayaan-1.
Chandrayaan-2 – which also comprised an orbiter, a lander and a rover – was launched in July 2019 but it was only partially successful. Its orbiter continues to circle and study the Moon even today, but the lander-rover failed to make a soft landing and crashed during touchdown. It was because of “a last-minute glitch in the braking system”, explained Mr Annadurai.
Mr Somanath has said they have carefully studied the data from the last crash and carried out simulation exercises to fix the glitches.
Chandrayaan-3, which weighs 3,900kg and cost 6.1bn rupees ($75m; £58m), has the “same goals” as its predecessor – to ensure a soft-landing on the Moon’s surface, he added.
The lander (called Vikram, after the founder of Isro) weighs about 1,500kg and carries within its belly the 26kg rover which is named Pragyaan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom.
After Friday’s lift-off, the craft will take about 15 to 20 days to enter the Moon’s orbit. Scientists will then start reducing the rocket’s speed over the next few weeks to bring it to a point which will allow a soft landing for Vikram.
If all goes to plan, the six-wheeled rover will then eject and roam around the rocks and craters on Moon’s surface, gathering crucial data and images to be sent back to Earth for analysis.
“The rover is carrying five instruments which will focus on finding out about the physical characteristics of the surface of the Moon, the atmosphere close to the surface and the tectonic activity to study what goes on below the surface. I’m hoping we’ll find something new,” Mr Somanath told Mirror Now.