Watch | India's Chandrayaan-3 makes majestic lift-off from Sriharikota

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched the Chandrayaan-3 mission from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 2:35 pm local time in its second attempt at soft landing on the surface of the moon. The journey to the moon will take around 40 days and the spacecraft is expected to land on the lunar surface byAugust 23.

If ISRO can successfully pull off this mission, India will join the exclusive list that has only three countries, the United States, the Soviet Union and China, which were able to make a soft landing on the Moon. In 2013, China emerged as the only country which succeeded in its first attempt with the Chang’e-3 mission.

The moon lander named 'Vikram' was perched on a GSLV Mark 3 heavy-lift launch vehicle, which is being called the 'Bahubali' rocket. The GSLV, which has been renamed Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (LVM-3), stands 43.5 metres tall, which is half the height of India's Qutb Minar.

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India's ‘Vikram’ to land at South Pole of the moon

For the first time,India's Vikramwill land on the moon's South Pole, where water molecules were earlier found. The world was amazed to see the findings made during the first moon mission of India in 2008.

As per the plan, Vikram should have a safe, soft landing. After that, the rover Pragyan will be released by the lander which will roam on the surface of the moon for a lunar day, which is equal to 14 Earth days, and carry out scientific experiments.

The scientists aim at analysing the lunar soil and study the surface of the moon as well as the moon quakes. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has kept its fingers crossed since its last moon mission failed in July 2019.

"The main lacuna in the last Chandrayaan-2 mission was that there were off-nominal conditions that were initiated in the system. Everything was not nominal. And the craft was not able to handle the off-nominal condition for a safe landing," said ISRO Chief S Somnath, while speaking to NDTV.

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ISRO has stated that it has learnt a lot from the last moon mission, updated the software and decreased the number of engines on the lander to four from five. They stated that they have rigorously tested everything.

Somanath stated that they have designed the new mission in a way to ensure it lands successfully even if some of its elements fail. ISRO has examined several scenarios like engine failure, algorithm failure, sensor failure, and calculation failure and has taken measures to counteract them.

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