From where was Chandrayaan-3 launched and what was unique about its landing site?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A. Chandrayaan-3 lifted off on 14 July 2023 aboard an LVM3 (mission LVM3-M4) from the Second Launch Pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, SDSC-SHAR, Sriharikota — India's only orbital launch site. Its Vikram lander made a soft landing on 23 August 2023 at roughly 69° south latitude, in the rugged high-latitude terrain near the Moon's south polar region. That made India the first country to soft-land near the lunar south pole, and the fourth country to soft-land on the Moon at all after the USSR, the USA and China.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Both halves are wrong. VSSC at Thiruvananthapuram is ISRO's launch-vehicle design and development centre, not a launch site — India's orbital launches all go from Sriharikota. And the landing was in the southern high latitudes, not near the lunar equator (where earlier Soviet and American landers touched down).  (c) The launch site is right but the pole is wrong. The whole scientific interest of Chandrayaan-3 lay in the south polar region, where permanently shadowed craters may hold water ice.  (d) The launch site is right, but Vikram landed on the near side of the Moon. Only China's Chang'e missions have soft-landed on the lunar far side.

Concept: Chandrayaan-3 was ISRO's follow-up to the Chandrayaan-2 landing failure of 2019: a propulsion module, the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover, with a redesigned, failure-tolerant landing sequence. It carried no orbiter of its own because Chandrayaan-2's orbiter, still healthy in lunar orbit, provided the relay and imaging support. The south polar region was chosen because the Sun stays low there and crater floors never receive sunlight, so volatiles such as water ice can survive — but the same low Sun angle and broken terrain make landing far harder than at the equator.

State PCS 2026 Q29 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q29 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer