India has launched its third Moon mission, aiming to be the first to land near its little-explored south pole.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft with an orbiter, lander and a rover lifted off at 14:35 on Friday from Sriharikota space centre. The lander is due to reach the Moon on August 23-24.
If successful, India will be only the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, following the US, the former Soviet Union and China.
Thousands of people watched the launch from the viewer’s gallery and commentators described the sight of the rocket “soaring in the sky” as “majestic”. The lift off was greeted with cheers and loud applause from the crowds and the ientists.”Chandrayaan-3 has started its journey towards the Moon,” Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath said. The third in India’s programme of lunar exploration, Chandrayaan-3 is expected to build on the success of its earlier Moon missions. It comes 13 years after the country’s first Moon mission in 2008, which carried out “the first and most detailed search for water on the lunar surface and established the Moon has an atmosphere during daytime,”, said Mylswamy Annadurai, project director of Chandrayaan-1.
(BBC)