TIRUAPTI: A team of ISRO scientists, with a miniature model of Chandrayaan-3, offered prayers in Lord Venkateswara Swamy temple in Tirumala on Thursday, a day before the scheduled launch of India's third lunar exploration mission.
It has been a long-standing practice of ISRO officials to offer prayers with miniature models of rockets and satellites at Tirumala before their launch.
In a very brief interaction with media persons, ISRO scientists said they have a launch of Chandrayan -3, the mission to the moon on Friday. Chandrayaan-3 will be launched on July 14, at 2:35 pm IST from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, ISRO had announced.
Meanwhile, ISRO Chairman Sreedhara Panicker Somanah offered prayers at Chengalamma Prameswari Temple in Sullurpeta on Thursday. Speaking to media persons on the occasion, he said he sought blessings of Goddess Chengalmma for the success of the moon mission - Chandrayaan -3. "After launch on Friday, it will travel slowly towards Moon over the next month. We are hoping everything is alright. It will reach and land on the Moon after August 23," he said.
ISRO on its official Twitter handle posted that Mission Readiness Review has been completed and the board has authorized the launch. The countdown will commence on Thursday.
According to ISRO, Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. It consists of Lander and Rover configurations. It will be launched by LVM3 from SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota.
The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till the 100 km lunar orbit. The propulsion module has a Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and Polari metric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit.
The Lander will have the capability to soft land at a specified lunar site and deploy the Rover which will carry out in-situ chemical analysis of the lunar surface during the course of its mobility. The Lander and the Rover have scientific payloads to carry out experiments on the lunar surface.
The launcher for Chandrayaan-3 is GSLV-MK III or the LVM3 which will place the integrated module in an Elliptic Parking Orbit (EPO) of size 170 x 36500 km approximately. The mission objectives of Chandrayaan-3 are to demonstrate a safe and soft landing on Lunar Surface, to demonstrate Rover roving on the moon, and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.