Chandrayaan-3: India's historic Moon mission lifts off successfully

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India has launched its third Moon mission, aiming to be the first to land near its little-explored south pole.

The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft with an orbiter, lander and a rover lifted off at 14:35 on Friday (09:05 GMT) from Sriharikota space centre.

The lander is due to reach the Moon on 23-24 August.

If successful, India will be only the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, following the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

Chandrayaan-2 - which also comprised an orbiter, a lander and a rover - was launched in July 2019 but ... but the lander-rover failed to make a soft landing and crashed during touchdown.

The [Chandrayaan-3] lander (called Vikram, after the founder of Isro) weighs about 1,500kg and carries within its belly the 26kg rover which is named Pragyaan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom.

The south pole of the Moon is still largely unexplored - the surface area that remains in shadow there is much larger than that of the Moon's north pole, which means there is a possibility of water in areas that are permanently shadowed. Chandrayaan-1 was the first to discover water on the Moon in 2008, near the south pole.