CHENNAI:There seems to a slight delay in the launch of India’s second lunar mission ‘Chandrayaan-2’. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has postponed the launch to October in view of additional tests to be carried out.
ISRO chairman K Sivan told the media persons at the Chennai airport on Friday that the experts had met recently and suggested the tests, following which the mission would be launched in October.
“Chandrayaan-2 will not be launched in April. The launch date has been changed to October,” he said.
Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh, who is in charge of the Department of Space, said on February 16 last that the mission would be launched in April.
However, Sivan said while the target date for the launch was was April, the Indian Space Research Organisation would biw launch the mission in October or November, after the tests are carrried out.
The Chandrayaan-2, a totally indigenous mission costing about `800 crore, would orbit around the moon and perform the objectives of remote-sensing the moon.The payloads will collect scientific information on lunar topography, mineralogy, elemental abundance, lunar exosphere and signatures of hydroxyl and water-ice.
Explaining how the mission proceeds, Indian Space Research Organisation scientists said that once the GSLV-F10 put the spacecraft in the 170 km x 20,000 km elliptical orbit, the orbiter would be manoeuvred towards the 100-km lunar orbit by firing thrusters and then the lander housing the rover will separate from the orbiter.
After a controlled descent, the lander will soft-land on the lunar surface at a specified site and deploy the six-wheeled robotic rover, which will move around the landing site in a semi-autonomous mode as decided by the ground commands.The instruments on the rover will observe the lunar surface and send back data, which will be useful for analysis of the lunar soil.Most complex part of the entire mission is soft-landing on the lunar surface of the moon. Only the US, Russia and China have been able to soft-land spacecraft on the lunar surface.