Explained: Chandrayaan-3 launch date revealed; how is it different from Chandrayaan 1 and 2?

Chandrayaan 3, India’s 3rd lunar mission will lift off from the spaceport in Sriharikota on July 14 at 2:35 pm and will land on Moon on August 23 or 24, if everything goes according to the plan. The Chandrayaan-3 moon mission will be launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which has combined the spacecraft with the Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM3) launch vehicle.

But before its launch on July 14, several questions arises with the launch of previous Chandryaans. People are interested to know how it’s different from Chandrayaan 2, which couldn’t finish its job and how Chandrayaan-3 will work. Let’s understand that below. 

Chandrayaan-3 does not include an orbiter, in contrast to Chandrayaan-2. For one lunar day or around 14 days on Earth, the lander and rover are intended to function and gather data on the surface of the moon. This is the entire mission life of Chandrayaan-3. The rover would split from the lander after landing and roam about the moon's surface while conducting experiments and gathering data.

The first space mission by any nation to perform a soft landing on the southern polar zone of the Moon was Chandrayaan 2. The Vikram lunar lander from the Chandrayaan-2 mission, which was launched on July 22, 2019, crashed on the Moon in the early hours of September 6. About three months later, NASA discovered its debris. Despite the setback, the mission wasn't entirely unsuccessful because its Orbiter component continued to operate smoothly and obtained a plethora of new data that increased our understanding of the Moon and its environment.

Chandrayaan-2, in contrast to Chandrayaan-1, tried to soft-land its Vikram module on the lunar surface and deploy the six-wheeled Pragyaan Rover to conduct a number of scientific investigations. Chandrayaan-1 weighed 1380 kg upon liftoff, while Chandrayaan-2 was 3850 kg.

Chandrayaan-1 was India's first lunar mission, launched on October 22, 2008, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. Up until August 29, 2009, it was operational for at least 312 days and completed more than 3,400 lunar orbits.

The Chandrayaan-1 mission was officially deemed a failure by the Indian Space Research Organisation on August 29, 2009, after nearly a year of battling technical difficulties and a subsequent contact failure.