ISRO to launch Chandrayaan-3 this year

"This is going to be the year of Chandrayaan-3 and Gaganyaan," declared Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief Dr. K Sivan on Wednesday. Sivan said that four astronauts have been selected for India's first manned mission, Gaganyaan and that their training will start in the third week of January. Gaganyaan aims to send a three-member crew to space for a period of five to seven days. The spacecraft will be placed in a low earth orbit of 300-400km.

"We have identified the four astronauts, they were sent to Russia for medical checkup. They will undergo training in Russia," the ISRO chief said. An advisory committee has also been formed for Gaganyaan. The training of the astronauts in Russia was finalized after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Russian President Vladimir Putin in September last year.

This emerged after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin as they decided to step up cooperation in the field of outer space. "There is a special test for these astronauts. This was initially conducted at an IIM and then in Russia and based on the results, four people were selected. They are from the Air Force. Gaganyaan is reported to have two unmanned and one manned flight to space. "We will be sending a humanoid as part of the unmanned mission. Six science experiments will be conducted, related to microgravity and bioscience," Sivan said.

TheISRO chief also added that work has begun on Chandrayaan-3, and has receivedthe government's approval. He added that work is continuing parallelly onGaganyaan and Chandrayaan-3, which might take 14-16 months, which could resultin works being pushed to 2021. The overall cost of the project will be aroundRs 600 crore.

Addressing the issues with Chandrayaan-2, Sivan said that they have made good progress on it even though they could not land successfully. "The orbiter is still functioning, and it is going to function for the next seven years to produce science data," he said. Chandrayaan-3 will be a repeat of Chandrayaan-2 and will link to the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter already in space. P Veeramuthuvel, who was the associate director will be the project director for Chandrayaan-3.

"Thereis no objective difference between Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3 because wecouldn't accomplish the target we had. So, in Chandrayaan-3, we want todemonstrate a soft landing. To carry lander from here to the moon, we don'thave an orbiter. A dedicated vehicle will take the lander to the moon. Thelander will be a replica of the Vikram Lander," the ISRO chief.  Chandrayaan-2, India's most ambitious lunarmission was launched onboard a heavy rocket (GSLV Mark-III) from Sriharikota onJuly 22, 2019. The spacecraft comprised of three segments – the Orbiter, thelander 'Vikram' and rover 'Pragyan'. It was the first space mission to attempta soft landing on the moon's South Polar region. The lander was scheduled tomake a soft landing on the moon's south pole on September 7. But Vikram landermade a hard landing on the surface of the moon.

When asked if the landing location would be changed for Chandrayaan-3, the ISRO chief said that there was no issue with the landing location. "We have learned from failures. We understood what went wrong," he said.

Thedebris of the lander was flagged by Chennai techie Shanmuga Subramanian, afterwhich NASA released pictures of the landing site. Sivan said that heappreciated the techie's efforts and congratulated him. When asked why ISRO didnot release the pictures on its own, he said, "We are absolutely transparent.The day after Chandrayaan-2 made a hard landing, we had announced that we hadlocated where it landed and we had located the debris. We didn't put picturesbecause that is strategic information."

In addition to the missions planned this year, the ISRO chief also announced that a second spaceport will be coming up in Tamil Nadu's Thoothukudi, for which land acquisition has been initiated. The spaceport will be spread over an area of 2300 acres. As earlier announced, ISRO will be launching the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) for the first time this year. The first few SSLV launches will be from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

Sivan also stated that satellites that were slated for launch in 2019 but weren't done yet will be launched by March 2020 and that a total of 25 missions are planned for this year.  In 2020, ISRO will also be launching its own GPS system, and mobile phones will be equipped with NavIC.

NavIC is the operational name of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, an autonomous regional satellite navigation system. NavIC, the satellite, has been operational since 2018 and is part of ISRO's aim to give India its own version of GPS.