Chandrayaan-3 launch: ISRO chief says if all goes well, lunar landing on August 23

The Chairman of the Indian space agency has confirmed that the Chandrayaan-3 launch would happen as planned at 2:35pm, Friday, 14th July, from the Indian spaceport at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. Chairman Somanath and the top officials of ISRO have been reviewing the launch preparation activities from the spaceport, since Wednesday. He made the announcement while speaking to the media at the Changalamman Devi temple near the spaceport, where he offered prayers ahead of the launch. The countdown for the high-profile launch mission commenced at 1:00pm IST on Thursday.

On Thursday noon, Somanath and officials from the spaceport presented holy offerings at the temple and offered prayers. "The Chandrayaan-3 launch is at 2:35pm tomorrow, our strong and big rocket LVM3 will launch this mission. Tomorrow, Chandrayaan-3 will start its long journey and orbit the Earth, thereafter it will slowly travel to the moon over the next 30 days. If all goes well, we are looking at a Lunar soft-landing around 23rd August or in the following days" he said.

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Speaking about the Chandrayaan-1 and Chandrayaan-2 missions, he said that the maiden Indian moon mission had lived for more than six months and found the presence of water on the moon, whereas the Chandrayaan-2 mission found water (in liquid state) on the moon and even confirmed it. He said that each of the previous missions was successful in its own way.

"I need the blessings of Changalamma Devi (the temple's presiding deity), so I came here for praying for the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission" he said.

Earlier in the day, a team of officials from the ISRO headquarters had offered prayers at the revered Venkateshwara Swami temple (commonly known as Tirupati temple) at Tirumala. While executing important missions space agencies and their teams follow a lucky charm or a tradition that is inspired by their respective cultures. For example, ahead of a mission, NASA-JPL teams exchange jars of 'lucky peanuts' and consume them during the mission.

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