iPhone | iPad
Android
Huawei
The two-stage rocketship, taller than the Statue of Liberty, blasted off from the company's Starbase launch site near Boca Chica
KT APPDOWNLOAD
Watch: India's Chandrayaan-3 lifts off for historic Moon mission
The launch rocket will be blasting the spacecraft into an elliptical Earth orbit before it loops toward the moon for a scheduled landing around August 23
Screengrab
India's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft blasted off for the country's historic Moon mission on Fridayt, at 2.35pm (1.05pm, UAE time ).
“This remarkable mission will carry the hopes and dreams of our nation,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted earlier.
The rocket will attempt to land a robotic rover on the Moon's south pole, an area of special interest for space agencies and private space companies because of the presence of water ice that could support a future space station. This will be a first for space exploration.
The Chandrayan-3 launch rocket will be blasting the spacecraft into an elliptical Earth orbit before it loops toward the moon for a scheduled landing around August 23.
If the mission succeeds, India would join a group of three other countries that have managed a controlled lunar landing, including the US, the former Soviet Union, and China.
Chandrayaan, which means "moon vehicle" in Sanskrit, includes a two metres (6.6 feet) tall lander designed to deploy a rover near the lunar south pole, where it is expected to remain functional for two weeks running a series of experiments.
Watch the liftoff live here:
The launch is India's first major mission since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government announced policies to spur investment in space launches and related satellite-based businesses.
Since 2020, when India opened to private launches, the number of space startups has more than doubled. Late last year, Skyroot Aerospace, whose investors include Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC, launched India's first privately built rocket.
(With inputs from agencies)
ALSO READ:
More news from Space
Burning debris was seen falling onto mountain slopes as sprinklers began spraying water
They moved into the space station last August; their replacements arrived last week in their own SpaceX capsule
Nora AlMatrooshi and Mohammad AlMulla graduated from the 2021 NASA Astronaut Candidate Class training programme on Tuesday
Abdulla Al Shehhi and Fatima Al Shamsi shed light on the urgency of debris mitigation to secure the future of space exploration
According to previous estimates from the company and Nasa, the spacecraft was supposed to operate on the moon for seven to 10 days
Odysseus descended from an orbit and guided itself to the surface, aiming for a relatively flat spot among all the cliffs and craters near the south pole
It will pass over Saudi Arabia during its descent