- The Chandrayaan-3 Mission is aimed at demonstrating critical technologies to land the spacecraft on the south pole of the moon.
- It is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.
- Chandrayaan-3 is a composite of three modules i.e., propulsion, lander and rover.
- The mission carries scientific instruments to study the thermo-physical properties of the lunar regolith, lunar seismicity, lunar surface plasma environment and elemental composition in the vicinity of the landing site.
- The propulsion module would carry the lander and rover configuration till 100 km lunar orbit.
- It has Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and Polari metric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit.
The lander payloads would be:
- ‘Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment’ which would calculate the thermal conductivity and temperature
- ‘Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity’ to measure the seismicity around the landing site
- ‘Langmuir Probe’ which would estimate the plasma density and its variations.
- A passive Laser Retroreflector Array from the NASA is also onboard for lunar laser ranging studies.
- The rover payloads would be ‘Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer’ and ‘Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy’ for deriving the elemental composition in the vicinity of the landing site.
- The Chandrayaan Spacecraft would be launched by LVM3 (Launch Vehicle Mark-III) earlier referred as (GSLV Mk III) from Sriharikota.
SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB