Process on to enhance launch frequency of LVM-3 which took Chandrayaan-3 to the Moon

ISRO is continuously carrying out processes for enhancement of launch frequency of LVM-3, Mission Director of Chandrayaan-3 S Mohanakumar said on Friday.

Chennai: ISRO is continuously carrying out processes for enhancement of launch frequency of Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3), Mission Director of Chandrayaan-3 S Mohanakumar said on Friday.

In a lecture about the nation’s third Moon mission at the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) in Vellore near here, Mohanakumar said the LVM-3 — the operational, heavy lift launch vehicle of ISRO — has got a spectacular pedigree of seven successive, successful missions.

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Mohanakumar, a senior scientist with the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre-ISRO, is the Mission Director of the recently launched Chandrayaan-3.

He said the Chandrayaan-3 launch was the seventh successive mission of LVM-3, the first among them being the Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Mission, the first step towards the nation’s ambitious human spaceflight programme. By design, the LVM is a highly reliable and robust vehicle and has proved its versatility to undertake all kinds of complex missions, he said.

“Actually, we are in the continuous process of quality improvement, payload augmentation and enhancement of launch frequency of LVM-3 vehicle, considering the national requirements as well as customer satellite requirements.” The LVM-3 vehicle in its variant called human-rated launch vehicle has been chosen for the Gaganyaan mission as well.

The additional qualification test, as part of the certification exercise, with objectives such as improved reliability, has really added value to the robustness of the vehicle.

“Our strategy is to test the human-rated systems in operational flights itself so that we will get adequate confidence before actual human spaceflight in addition to the planned uncrewed flights.” In the Chandrayaan-3 mission, certain aspects of human rating were incorporated. He thanked ISRO and the union government for giving him the responsibility to lead the launch vehicle team to accomplish the launch of Chandrayaan-3 mission.

VIT founder-chancellor G Viswanathan was present on the occasion.