ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 Mission Likely To Be Launched In 2022 Owing To Covid-19 Disruptions

Hit by the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)'s ambitious moon exploration mission Chandrayaan-3 which was slated to be launched later this year may now only take flight in 2022, reports Economic Times.

ISRO's chief Dr K Sivan said, "We are working on it. It is the same configuration like Chandrayaan-2 but it will not have an orbiter. The orbiter launched during Chandrayaan-2 will be used for Chandrayaan-3. With that we are working on a system and mostly the launch will be next year in 2022."

Under the mission, ISRO will be aiming to establish India as the first nation to successfully land on the South Pole of the Moon. It will also demonstrate India's capabilities to make a landing for future interplanetary missions.

Before this, Chandrayaan-2 had taken a flight on 22 June 2019. The mission succeeded in launching the orbiter module in the Moon's orbit. However on 7 September 2019, the lander module Vikram hard-landed on the surface.