Modi govt approves Chandrayaan-3; launch may happen next year: ISRO Chief

Indian Space Research Organisation Chief K Sivan on Wednesday said the Modi government has approved Chandrayaan-3, and that the project is going on smoothly. "The land acquisition for a second space port has been initiated and the port will be in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu," the ISRO chief said during a press conference, adding that the projecting costing about Rs 250 crore could be launched as early as next year.

Sivan said ISRO made some good progress on Chandrayan-2, and that its orbiter would function for the next seven years. He added that work on both Chandrayaan-3 and Gaganyaan was going on simultaneously.

The space agency will send astronauts for the Gaganyaan manned mission training scheduled to start in the third week of January in Russia, the ISRO chief informed.

Four astronauts have been identified for the mission, he said.

Also read: Chandrayaan 2: NASA fails to locate Vikram lander due to 'long shadows' over landing site

The ISRO chief also congratulated the Chennai based techie who recently located the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-2 that hard-landed and maintained that it was the space agency's policy not to release picture of the crashed module. "We know where it crashed and where it is located," Sivan said.

To a question on what went wrong with Vikram lander, he said it was due to velocity reduction failure. "The velocity reduction failure was due to internal reasons," he said.

Also read: Chandrayaan 2: ISRO examines cause of communication failure with lander Vikram

Chandrayaan-2 mission was India's first attempt to land on lunar surface. The ISRO had planned the landing on the South Pole of the lunar surface. However, the lander Vikram hard-landed.

Also read: Chandrayaan 2: ISRO releases pictures of moon's surface

With PTI inputs