Countdown for  Chandrayaan-3 progressing smoothly

The countdown for the launch of India’s third mission to moon, Chandrayaan-3- is progressing smoothly.  

A senior official of the Indian space agency said the weather forecast is good for the rocket to fly as scheduled. 

The rocket is expected to fly away as scheduled on July 14 at 2.35 p.m. The countdown began at 1.05 p.m. on Thursday during which the last-minute checks are carried out, liquid and cryogenic stages will be fuelled up. 

 The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft will be carried by India’s heavy lift rocket, the 642-ton LVM3. 

 While the first rocket’s first stage is powered by solid fuel, the second stage is by liquid fuel, and the third and final stage consists of a cryogenic engine powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. 

 At the time of blast off, the 642-ton rocket will have a total propellant mass of 553.4 tons – all three stages put together. Just over 16 minutes into its flight or at about 2.50 p.m., the rocket will eject the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft at an altitude of about 179 km. 

 After that, the Chandrayaan-3 will begin its own long moon journey of about 3.84 lakh km. 

The lander carried by the spacecraft is expected to make a soft-landing on the moon on August 23 or 24. 

The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft comprises a propulsion module (weighing 2,148 kg), a lander (1,723.89 kg) and a rover (26 kg), the ISRO said. 

The main purpose of Chandrayaan-3 is to safely land the lander on the moon soil. Following that, the rover will roll out to do the experiments. 

According to the Indian space agency, the propulsion module has Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and Polari metric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit.