Chandrayaan-3 is the third lunar exploration mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation. The launch of Chandrayaan-3 took place at 14 July 2023, at 2:35 pm IST and injection of 100 km circular polar orbit was completed successfully as part of phase one. The lander and rover is expected to land near the lunar south pole region on 23 August 2023. It consists of a lander and the Pragyan rover similar to Chandrayaan-2, but does not have an orbiter. Its propulsion module behaves like a communication relay satellite. The propulsion module carries the lander and rover configuration until the spacecraft is in a 100 km lunar orbit.
In the second phase of the Chandrayaan programme to demonstrate soft landing on the Moon, ISRO launched Chandrayaan-2 on board a Launch Vehicle Mark-3 launch vehicle consisting of an orbiter, a lander and a rover. The lander was scheduled to touchdown on the lunar surface in September 2019 to deploy the Pragyan rover. Chandrayaan-2, where a last-minute glitch in the landing guidance software led to the lander crashing after entering lunar orbit, another lunar mission was proposed.
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