Chandrayaan-3 mission to be launched on July 14

It will be launched from the space port at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will launch Chandrayaan-3 on July 14, from Sriharikota.

The national space agency on Thursday announced a 2.35-pm launch for the lunar mission, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. ISRO Chairman S Somanath had earlier said that the launch was being planned during a July 12-19 window.

Earlier on Thursday, the Launch Vehicle Mark III (LVM3), which will launch the spacecraft, was moved to the launchpad at SDSC. ISRO said it marked the commencement of the “final stage of preparation” for the launch. The spacecraft was integrated with the launch vehicle on Wednesday.

Read | Chandrayaan-3: ISRO integrates spacecraft with launch vehicle

The mission is designed to demonstrate an end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the surface of the moon. It constitutes a propulsion module that carries the lander to lunar orbit, and a lander module with the rover. The propulsion module will carry the lander-rover configuration till 100-km lunar orbit.

While the lander payloads are aimed at studying features including thermal conductivity, temperature, and seismicity around the landing site, the rover will carry payloads that will derive the elemental composition in the vicinity of the landing site, ISRO said.

The mission is a follow-up to 2019’s Chandrayaan-2 which saw a failed landing attempt.