Still from the short film 'Chandrayaan 2', shown at the Nehru Planetarium, in New Delhi, Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2023. ISRO's ambitious Chandrayaan 3's Lander Module (LM) is all set to touch down the lunar surface Wednesday evening.
Credit: PTI Photo
India and the rest of the world is waiting with bated breath for Chandrayaan-3, ISRO's Moon mission, to land on the lunar surface.
Chandrayaan-3, as its name suggests, is the third iteration of the India space agency's lunar missions, with the first having been launched in 2008.
In light of Chandrayaan-3's much-anticipated milestone, we take a look at how much each of the Chandrayaan missions cost.
Chandrayaan 1 was launched on October 22, 2008: it was India’s first attempt to reach the Moon and had a budget of Rs 386 crore. It was also known as India’s budget mission to the Moon. It was one of major milestones in India's space programme.
The follow-up mission, Chandrayaan-2, saw a considerable leap in terms of the budget allocation. It had a budget of a whopping Rs 978 crore, nearly three times that of the first mission. However, on September 6, 2019, the Chandrayaan-2 lander malfunctioned due to a software glitch, resulting in ISRO losing communication with it.
For the Chandrayaan-3 mission, ISRO had a budget of around just Rs 613 crore ($74 million) for the mission.
In total, nearly Rs 2,000 crore has been spent by India on its ambitious missions to reach the moon, but even the cumulative figure is far below that of other space agencies: for perspective, NASA is on track to spend a whopping $93 billion for its Artemis moon missions.