India to launch Chandrayaan III in first half of 2021: Jitendra Singh

India is expected to launch Chandrayaan-III in the first half or 2021 and the mission has been configured on the lessons learnt from Chandrayaan-II, Minister of State in PMO Jitendra Singh said on Wednesday.

In a written reply in Lok Sabha, the minister said that the revised configuration takes care of the robustness in design, capacity enhancement for mission flexibility while also retaining the heritage of Chandrayaan- II to the extent possible.

"The tentative launch schedule for Chandrayaan - III is first half of 2021," he said.

India's space agency ISRO had lost contact with Chandrayaan-II's lander near the moon's surface in September last year. It hard-landed on the surface.

Chandrayaan-2 mission was a highly complex mission, which brought together an orbiter, lander and rover with the goal of exploring south pole of the moon.

Answering a query on the status of Gaganyaan programme, the minister said space flight training of four astronaut candidates has also commenced.

Gaganyaan is India's first manned mission in space.

"Four biological and two physical science-related microgravity experiments from academic institutions are shortlisted for unmanned mission of Gaganyaan programme," he said.

He said hardware realisation has commenced for ground test and first unmanned mission.

The minister said national collaboration has started for design, development and delivery of human-centric products such as crew medical kit, crew health monitoring system, emergency survival kit, dosimeters, earmuffs and fire suppression system.

A three-week training programme for flight surgeon was completed at ISRO with the participation of CNES, France, he added.