Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft and (Right) the Aditya L1 mission spacecraft

Hit by successive delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdown, the first pictures of the Chndrayaan-3 mission to the Moon have finally arrived. The images were released in a documentary by the Indian Space & Research Organisation (ISRO) titled "Space on Wheels" which showcases 75 satellites launched by India.

The video shows what appears to be the Chandrayaan-3 lander that will touch the lunar surface. The mission is a successor of the Chandrayaan-2 mission that unfortunately crashed on the dark side of the Moon in 2019.

ISRO has said that it will be trying to launch the awaited mission by August this year, however, it seems difficult since several hardware testing remains to be done. The Department of Space in a written response in February this year had said that work is underway on Chandrayaan-3 and it will be launched in August this year.

ISRO has been working to launch Chandrayaan-3 by August this year.

The mission has been delayed due to Covid-19 as Minister of Science & Technology Dr. Jitendra Singh said that several ongoing missions were impacted and that "Reprioritisation of projects has taken place in the backdrop of space sector reforms and newly introduced demand-driven models."

Apart from Chandrayaan-3, the 17-minute-long documentary contains details about the country's upcoming Aditya L1 mission and the Gaganyaan mission that will launch Indian astronauts into space.

The Aditya-L1 mission that will be placed in the first Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system will study a number of properties of the Sun, such as the dynamics and origins of coronal mass ejections. India has already been working with the European Space Agency to create a network to track the lunar and solar missions.