Chandrayaan-4 Set to Launch in 2027: Centre

The Chandrayaan-4 mission, whose objective is to bring back lunar samples that are not damaged and contaminated, will be launched in 2027, Union science & technology minister Jitendra Singh said on Thursday.

- HT Correspondent

MUMBAI: The Chandrayaan-4 mission, whose objective is to bring back lunar samples that are not damaged and contaminated, will be launched in 2027, Union science & technology minister Jitendra Singh said on Thursday.

India has sent three space missions to the Moon in 2008, 2019 and 2023 in the Chandrayaan series. In the first two iterations, the Moon's surface, sub-surface and exosphere were studied on a global scale from orbiter platforms. Chandrayaan-3 was the first-ever successful lunar soft-landing and robotic exploration in the southern polar region of the Moon, and has conducted in-situ studies of the lunar surface, near-surface plasma. It also recorded, for the first time, lunar ground vibrations in the southern polar regions.

Chandrayaan-4 will involve at least two separate launches of the heavy-lift LVM-3 rocket that will carry five different components of the mission which will be assembled in orbit.

"The Chandrayaan-4 mission aims to collect samples from the moon's surface and bring them back to the Earth," Singh told PTI Videos in an interview. During a speech at Akashvani in October last year, former ISRO chairman S Somanath had said that Chandrayaan-4 would likely be launched in 2028.