ISRO Confirms Chandrayaan-3 Will Launch In 2020, Govt Says It Will Cost Less Than Chandrayaan-2

Without wasting any time, 2020 has started off with a bang as far as India's space ambition is concerned.

Brushing off the dejection of Chandrayaan-2, ISRO will reattempt landing a rover on the moon's surface with Chandrayaan-3 mission expected to launch within 2020, as confirmed by ISRO Chief K Sivan and other government sources.

According to ANI, ISRO Chief K Sivan confirmed that the government had given the green signal for Chandrayaan-3 mission, and that it would be launched within 2020 calendar year.

The ISRO Chief's statement is consistent with what Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday, as per a Times Now report, that India will launch Chandrayaan-3 in 2020.

After years of hard work, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched its second moon mission in July 2019, attempting to smoothly touchdown a lander and rover on the lunar surface. But heartbreak followed as ISRO lost contact with the lander just 2.1 km from the lunar surface.

Chandrayaan 2 successfully managed to place a moon orbiter without any hitch, but failed to land the first rover on moon's southern pole. For this same reason, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said it's wrong to label Chandrayaan-2 as a disappointment, as it was India's very first attempt to land on the lunar surface and that too on its unexplored southern pole -- a feat no country has ever accomplished till date.

The total budget of Chandrayaan-3 is also expected to be lesser than Chandrayaan-2, according to the government, even as a recent TOI report revealed that ISRO had asked for 75 crores more than the previously assigned budget for the Chandrayaan-3 mission.

However, Chandrayaan-3 isn't the only big ticket launch ISRO's working on this year. The Indian space agency¡¯s immediate priority is sure to be Aditya (solar mission) along with continued preparation for Gaganyaan (human spaceflight mission).