Watch India launch Chandrayaan 3 moon rover and lunar lander on July 14.

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India's next moon mission will launch early Friday morning (July 14), and you can watch the historic action live.

 

The robotic Chandrayaan 3 mission, which aims pull off India's first-ever moon landing, is scheduled to launch atop an LVM3 rocket from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Friday at 5:05 a.m. EDT (0905 GMT, or 2:35 p.m. local time).

 

Watch it live at Space.com, courtesy of the Indian Space Research Organisation.

An LVM3 rocket carrying India's Chandrayaan 3 moon mission rolls out to the launch pad ahead of its planned July 14, 2023 liftoff. (Image credit: ISRO)

 

Chandrayaan 3 consists of a lander and a rover, each of which carries a handful of scientific instruments. If all goes according to plan, the duo will touch down softly near the moon's south pole in late August, then study their environs for about one lunar day (roughly 14 Earth days).

 

With a successful touchdown, India would join a very exclusive club: To date, only the United States, the Soviet Union and China have successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon.

India has tried to do so once before, on the Chandrayaan 2 mission in September 2019. But that attempt ended with a crash into the lunar surface.

 

Chandrayaan 2 wasn't a total failure, however; the mission also featured an orbiter, which arrived safely and continues to study the moon today. (There's no lunar orbiter on Chandrayaan 3)

 

The Indian Space Research Organisation's Chandrayaan 3 lander (top) is seen atop its service module ahead of a planned July 2023 launch. (Image credit: ISRO)
 

Chandrayaan 3 will be Friday's second liftoff, if all goes to plan. SpaceX aims to launch 54 of its Starlink internet satellites at 12:40 a.m. EDT (0440 GMT) from Florida on that same morning. And California-based company Rocket Lab is planning a launch of its own from New Zealand on Friday afternoon.