Sriharikota: Aiming to take a "billion dreams to the moon", India on Monday successfully launched its second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 on-board its rocket GSLV-MkIII-M1 from the spaceport here to explore the uncharted south pole of the celestial body by landing a rover. The launch vehicle lifted-off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here into cloudy skies at 2.43 pm and successfully placed the 3,850-kg Chandrayaan-2 into the Earth orbit 16.42 minutes later.

Immediately after Chandrayaan-2's separation from the rocket, its solar array automatically got deployed and the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network at Bengaluru successfully took control of the spacecraft, Indian Space Research Organisation said in a statement later.