Chandrayaan-3 launch likely on July 13; ISRO chief says no final decision yet
New Delhi, Jun 28: India is looking at July 13 as a possible launch date for Chandrayaan-3 that entails landing a rover on the lunar surface.
A senior official said the Chandrayaan-3 mission would be launched on July 13 at 2:30 pm from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.
However, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman S Somanath said while the date has not been finalised yet, the agency was looking at the earliest possible date between July 12 and 19.
He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an Indian Air Force event.
"Currently, the window of opportunity is between July 12 and 19. We will take the earliest possible date, may be July 12, 13 or 14 and go towards the end, unless there is a technical issue cropping up," he said replying to queries related to the July 13 launch date.
"No exact date has been announced. We will come to that exact date after all the tests are completed final date will be within this range," Somanath said.
ISRO said the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has been fully built and assembled with the faring, and is waiting for integration with the rocket.
"Currently, the rocket integration is going on and possibly it will be completed in another two to three days, and then we have to go for a test programme," Somanath said. He added that after integration with the rocket a series of tests would also be carried out.
Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. It has a lander and rover configuration.
The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till 100 km lunar orbit. It has a Spectro-Polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth payload to study the spectral and polarimetric measurements of Earth from lunar orbit.
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England sticking with Key, McCullum and Stokes despite Ashes humbling
London (AP): England is not sacking anybody following the 4-1 Ashes loss in Australia.
A review of the tour by the England and Wales Cricket Board, announced within hours of the final match in January, was concluded on Monday. Firing people would “be the easy thing to do,” ECB chief executive Richard Gould said but he insisted, "This is not the time to throw everything out."
Managing director Rob Key, coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes kept their jobs after the best England side to go to Australia in 14 years lost the Ashes in 11 days with two games to spare.
“Moving people on can sometimes be the easy thing to do. That's not the route that we're going to take,” Gould said. “I've seen the driving ambition and determination that we're lucky enough to have within our leadership group to take the lessons from the Ashes and move forward.”
Gould previously was the chief executive of Bristol City soccer club and said the ECB would not follow the same route as soccer's hire-and-fire culture.
“Cricket is a very unique sport in that it takes a team of leadership ... it's not like football where there's a single point of failure or success with a manager," he said. He added the ECB would not “select or deselect management based on a popularity campaign.”
The main criticisms of England's tour were poor preparation, player misbehavior, and selection mistakes.
At a press conference at Lord's, Gould and Key said McCullum and Stokes have not had a “bust up,” they did not want McCullum to “completely change” but “to evolve,” the behavior of some players was “unprofessional,” there will be more consequences for underperforming, and a commitment to “better long-term planning” ahead of major test series.
Some changes were already implemented for the Twenty20 World Cup, where England reached the semifinals. Gould implied that performance saved McCullum.
Key acknowledged that England supporters would be disappointed to see the management team go unpunished.
“I know people want punishment and that people then should be sacked for that,” Key said. “That doesn't mean we don't feel like we've gone through some serious pain: Brendon, myself, Ben. It's been as tough a time as I think I've had.”
