Chandrayaan-3: India could become fourth country on the moon after rover launch

Watching crowds cheered on as India successfully launched its own mission to the moon. ITV News' Ellie Pitt reports

An Indian spacecraft has blazed its way to the far side of the moon.

Chandrayaan-3, the word for “moon craft” in Sanskrit, took off from a launch pad in Sriharikota in southern India on Friday with an orbiter, a lander and a rover - a demonstration of India’s emerging space technology.

The space agency hopes it will be a more succession mission than nearly four years ago, when Chandrayaan-2 lost contact after its lander crashed.

The newest spacecraft, which is unmanned, is set to embark on a journey lasting slightly over a month before landing on the moon’s surface later in August.

Applause and cheers swept through mission control at Satish Dhawan Space Center, where the Indian Space Research Organisation’s engineers and scientists celebrated as they monitored the launch.

Thousands of Indians cheered outside the mission control center and waved the national flag as they watched the spacecraft rise into the sky.

“Congratulations India, Chandrayaan-3 has started its journey towards the moon,” ISRO Director Sreedhara Panicker Somanath said shortly after the launch.

A successful landing would make India the fourth country - after the United States, the Soviet Union, and China - to achieve the feat.

Minister for railways, communications, electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw called the craft the "soaring pride of India."

The country's previous attempt to land a robotic spacecraft near the moon’s little-explored south pole ended in failure in 2019.

It entered the lunar orbit but lost touch with its lander that had crashed.

According to a failure analysis report submitted to the ISRO, the crash was caused by a software glitch.

The $140-million (around £106m) mission in 2019 was intended to study shadowed moon craters that are thought to contain water deposits.

Mr Somanath said the main objective of the mission this time was a safe and soft landing on the moon.

He added the Indian space agency has perfected the art of reaching up to the moon, "but it is the landing that the agency is working on."

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