19 missions have been planned by the Indian Space Research Organisation in 2022. These include eight launch vehicle missions, seven spacecraft missions and four technology demonstrator missions.
India's Chandrayaan 3 mission is scheduled for launch in August 2022, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology Dr Jitendra Singh has informed.
In a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha, Dr Jitendra Singh said that the realization of Chandrayaan-3 is in progress based on the learnings from Chandrayaan-2 and suggestions made by the national level experts. He further said that the testing of many related hardware had been successfully completed.
The minister further said that the 19 missions have been planned by the Indian Space Research Organisation in 2022. These include eight launch vehicle missions, seven spacecraft missions and four technology demonstrator missions.
Chandrayaan-3 is a lander-and rover-specific mission that aims to study not just one area of the Moon but all the areas combining the exosphere, the surface as well as the sub-surface in a single mission. With this mission, India will look to demonstrate its expertise of soft landing on a celestial body. Once on the surface, the rover will then communicate with Earth via the existing orbiter from Chandrayaan-2 and take images 100 km from the Moon’s orbit. The orbiter has an estimated lifespan of seven years.
India intends to use the Chandrayaan-3 to further study the lunar surface while focussing on the dark side of the Moon, which is believed to have ice and vast mineral reserves but has not seen sunlight in billions of years. The Lunar South pole remains in shadow much more than the North Pole. Further, there could be a possibility of the presence of water in the permanently shadowed areas around it. In addition, the South Pole region has craters that are cold traps and contain a fossil record of the early Solar System.
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