Chandrayaan-2, aimed at landing a rover on unchartered Lunar South Pole, was launched on July 22, 2019

Hit by the Coronavirus pandemic, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will likely launch the much-awaited Chandrayaan-3 mission to the Moon in the third quarter of 2022. The new timeline was revealed by Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology Dr Jitendra Singh, who said, "work of Chandrayaan-3 is in progress."

The minister in a written reply to Lok Sabha said that "Work on Chandrayaan-3 involves various processes including finalisation of configuration, subsystems realisation, integration, spacecraft level detailed testing and a number of special tests to evaluate the system performance on earth."

The work on Chandrayaa-2's successor was affected due to the coronavirus pandemic and the impending lockdown. "However, all work that were possible in the work from home mode were taken up even during lockdown periods. Chandrayaan-3 realisation resumed after commencement of the unlock period and is in the matured stage of realization," the Department of Space said in a statement.

Chandrayaan-3 was earlier slated to be launched this year, 2021. However, the Covid-19 lockdown affected several projects of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) including the lunar mission.

The renewed efforts towards reaching the Moon consist of a sole purpose to build stations and a permanent presence on Earth’s natural satellite.

"We are working on it. It is the same configuration like Chandrayaan-2 but it will not have an orbiter. The orbiter launched during Chandrayaan-2 will be used for Chandrayaan-3. With that, we are working on a system and mostly the launch will be next year in 2022," ISRO Chief K Sivan had said earlier in February.

However, the space agency had yet to decide a timeline for the launch.