Chandrayaan-3: Second bid to land on Moon by November 2020

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has announced their intention to send a second mission to soft-land on the Moon by November 2020. In the agency's first and recent attempt, which went awry on 7 September after a loss of communication with the landing module (consisting of a lander and a rover) resulted in a partial failure of the Chandrayaan 2 mission.

While the lander and rover are thought to have been destroyed in a crash landing, the mission is still survived by the Orbiter. The Chandrayaan 2 orbiter has several scientific, imaging and mapping instruments onboard, has captured its first three-dimensional map of a structure on the moon — an impact crater.

For the Chandrayaan 3 mission, as this second attempt has been dubbed, engineers and scientists at ISRO will design and build an entirely new lander and rover. Since the Chandrayaan 2 mission already has a functional orbiter that is currently in orbit around the Moon, Chandrayaan 3 will not feature an orbiter of its own, according to the TOI report.