Chandrayaan-3: India plans third Moon mission

[nitpicker]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50965778

Chandrayaan-3: India plans third Moon mission

1 January 2020

India has announced plans for a third lunar mission, months after its last one crash landed on the Moon's surface.

The chairman of India's space agency, K Sivan, said work was going "smoothly" on the Chandrayaan-3 unmanned mission. He said the country was aiming to launch the mission in 2020 but that it "may spill over" to 2021.

If successful, it would make India the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, and boost its credentials as a low-cost space power.
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Mr Sivan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), told reporters that Chandrayaan-3 would have a "similar configuration" to the previous mission.

Chandrayaan-2 was the most complex mission ever attempted by India's space agency. It had aimed to land on the south pole of the Moon - in a spot that no other landing craft had reached before - to carry out tasks including searching for water and minerals, and measuring moonquakes. But the high-profile Moon mission failed in September, when the module crash landed.
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Mr Sivan said the new mission would land in the same area, and would "have a lander, rover and propulsion module like its predecessor". The new equipment is set to cost some $35m (£26m), while the full cost of the mission is set to be significantly more.
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[Judi Lynn]

1. Good for them! Hope it will be a great success. NT