Chandrayaan: A successful series

Chandrayaan as its name suggests the vehicle for the moon. All the series of Chandrayaan have been very successful and have been sending very valuable and unique pictures of the moon. The Chandrayaan-2 has completed one whole year on 7th September 2020. It has shown good progress up in the orbit of the moon. We have been trying to reach the moon and find out the valuable resources up there. An atmosphere like Earth, maybe we can create it there. Water was also found by the previous versions of Chandrayaan. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has been trying to reach the south pole of the moon and find the water existence.

Talking about Chandrayaan-3 it will be launched in March 2021 and will be slightly different from its predecessor Chandrayaan-2. Chandrayaan-3 will not have an orbiter but it will only consist of a lander and a rover. Due to the Corona pandemic situation, there has been a delay in launching Chandrayaan-3. The target area will be the South Pole of the moon and the rocket used in this is the most powerful rocket of ISRO till date is the GSLV Mark 3. The launch site will at Satish Dhawan space center.

Moon is the closest we can explore. Moon may have some of the properties of the Earth because of the close distance. Chandrayaan-1 sent some images of rusting on the poles of the moon that show that there is the existence of water and oxygen because if these two elements are there then only the iron-rich rocks that are present there can react and rusting can happen. Because of the hard landing, Chandrayaan-2 ‘s Vikram lander had some problems but it is there in the lunar orbit and has enough fuel to survive till 7 long years. Chandrayaan-3 is a repeat mission of version 2 and it has an only lander and lunar rover and it is planned that this time there will be a soft landing. So hoping for the good and Chandrayaan-3 will be at its new heights soon.

Following this timeline Ministry also announced the first crewed orbiter namely Gaganyaan. This project will be launched in December 2021. An extent to 400km in the Earth’s orbit and the rocket used here is also GSLV mark 3. The maximum space for the crew is 3. Hope this would be a success.