India successfully launches its Moon Mission-2

NEW DELHI - India on Monday successfully launched its Moon Mission-2, or Chandrayaan-2, which was aborted on July 15 due to a technical snag.

The rocket GSLV-Mk-III carrying the Orbiter, Lander Vikram and Rover Pragyaan took off at 14:43 (Indian Standard Time) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, off the Bay of Bengal coast located in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

The Lander and the Rover are expected to touch down near the Lunar South Pole in early September, becoming the first ever spacecraft to land in that region. If successfully carried out, India would become the fourth country, following the US, Russia and China, to achieve this feat.

India's launch a week ago was called off less than an hour before liftoff due to a "technical snag."

Indian media reports said the launch was aborted after ISRO scientists identified a leak while filling helium in the cryogenic engine of the rocket. The ISRO neither confirmed nor denied the reports, saying instead that the problem had been identified and corrected.

The spacecraft carries an orbiter, a lander and a rover which will move around on the lunar surface for 14 earth days. It will take around 47 days to travel and land on the moon in September.

India's Chandrayaan-1 mission orbited the moon in 2008 and helped confirm the presence of water.

India plans to send its first manned spaceflight by 2022.

Xinhua-AP