So all eyes are now on Chandrayaan-3.
So all eyes are now on Chandrayaan-3. The spacecraft with an orbiter, lander and a rover lifted off on 14 July from the Sriharikota space centre in south India. The lander - called Vikram after Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) founder Vikram Sarabhai - carries within its belly the 26kg rover named Pragyaan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom. Its journey to the Moon has generated a lot of excitement in India, with wishes for the mission's success pouring in from across the country. Isro has announced plans for a live telecast of the landing and millions of people, including schoolchildren, are expected to tune in. Isro chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath has said he is confident that Chandrayaan-3 will make a successful soft landing. He said they had carefully studied the data from the Chandrayaan-2 crash and carried out simulation exercises to fix the glitches. In the past few days, the Vikram lander's camera has been extensively mapping the lunar surface while attempting t