In a massive feat, moon-bound Chandrayaan 2 has been successfully placed in the moon's orbit.
It was a rigorous "agnipariksha" of sorts for the moon-bound Chandrayaan-2 on Tuesday when the spacecraft underwent a crucial orbit manoeuvre. After a nearly 30-day journey, India's second mission to the moon inserted into the lunar orbit this morning.
Chandrayaan-2 mission comes 11 years after India's first mission to the moon. The ambitious moon mission aims at setting a major milestone in India's space missions by attempting a soft landing on the lunar surface. The feat has so far been achieved only by three countries - US, Russia and China. This mission would shed light on South Pole, a completely unexplored region of the moon.
Now, ISRO will carry out four more orbit manoeuvres (August 21, 28, 30 and September 1) to enter it into its final orbit passing over lunar poles at a distance of about 100 km from the Moon's surface.
Subsequently, the Vikram lander will separate from the orbiter on September 2, 2019 and for two days it will calibrate its systems.
Two orbit manoeuvres will be performed on the lander before the initiation of powered descent to make a soft landing on the lunar surface on September 7, 2019.
Soon after the rover-Pragyan- will roll down.
After working they will go to sleep. Owing the very cold climate the systems will be very cold and ISRO will try to wake up the systems 14 days after, that is, one lunar day.
On July 22, the Chandrayaan-2 was injected into an elliptical orbit of 170x45,475 km by India's heavy lift rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV Mk III) in a text book style.
The spacecraft comprises three segments -- the Orbiter (weighing 2,379 kg, eight payloads), the lander 'Vikram' (1,471 kg, four payloads) and rover 'Pragyan' (27 kg, two payloads).
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