Amidst the intensifying space race, India gears up for its second Moon landing attempt today
India gears up for its second Moon landing attempt today. At 2:35 p.m. local time on Friday, the Chandrayaan-3 is set to take off from Sriharikota, India's primary spaceport located on the island of Sriharikota in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
At 2:35 p.m. local time on Friday, the Chandrayaan-3 is set to take off from Sriharikota, India's primary spaceport located on the island of Sriharikota in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
India is gearing up for its second attempt to send an unmanned mission to the moon, joining countries like the US and China in a competitive race. The launch of Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled for Friday at 2:35 p.m. local time from Sriharikota, India's main spaceport located on Sriharikota Island in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Following a six-week journey in space, the mission aims to land near the lunar south pole, close to the site where India's previous moon mission ended in a crash in 2019.
If successful, the rover accompanying the mission will conduct experiments to study the chemical composition of the moon's surface and search for water. Designed to operate for one lunar day, equivalent to 14 days on Earth, the rover's mission aligns with India's ambition to become the fourth nation, after the Soviet Union, China, and the US, to achieve a successful moon landing. Notably, NASA remains the only agency to have sent astronauts to the moon.
The US has plans to return humans to the moon by the end of the decade, utilizing landers developed by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX, while China aims for its first crewed lunar mission by 2030. Russia, which hasn't landed on the moon since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, intends to send a robotic mission next month. Additionally, Japan has an uncrewed mission scheduled for August.
India's new lunar mission coincides with its recent breakthrough in enhancing cooperation with the US in outer space. ISRO Chairman S Somanath revealed that discussions are underway with Japan to collaborate on a joint moon mission during a press conference in New Delhi on Monday.
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Washington last month, India signed the Artemis Accords, a US-backed framework that governs joint missions and civilian space exploration, involving more than two dozen nations (excluding China and Russia). As part of this agreement, NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization have committed to a joint mission in the coming year, which includes sending an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station.
India's space infrastructure currently consists of 25 Earth observation satellites and approximately 30 other satellites, according to Somanath's article in the May issue of Yojana. However, India lags behind China, which had 590 operating satellites by the end of 2022, as reported by the Union of Concerned Scientists. While China has sent over two dozen people into space since its first astronaut, Yang Liwei, orbited the Earth in 2003, it has been nearly four decades since Rakesh Sharma became the only Indian to venture into outer space aboard a Soviet rocket to the USSR's space station.
ISRO has not yet announced a specific date for the inaugural flight of its human spaceflight program, known as Gaganyaan, but Somanath described the project as being in an advanced stage in his article.
The signing of the Artemis Accords and the agreement with NASA to send an Indian astronaut to the ISS could yield political benefits for Prime Minister Modi, who is preparing to seek an extension of his premiership into a second decade and face voters next year. Konark Bhandari, an associate fellow at Carnegie India, suggests that having an Indian astronaut in space before the elections would be an impressive achievement.
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