India’s most ambitious space Mission yet, Chandrayaan-2, is gearing up towards making its maiden launch in April and place its robotic rover on Moon for the first time in Indian space research history; and ISRO claims the spacecraft to be packed with more power than NASA’s Apollo missions.
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Just a decade after the maiden Chandrayaan-1 was sent to orbit the Moon in 2008, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will soon launch Chandrayaan-2 Mission to the moon. The mission is considered to be one of the most ambitions space projects ever conducted by India, will rift up into space in April this year and will cost over Rs 800 Crore. Chandrayaan-2, which is being tested since 2017, consists of Orbiter, Lander, and a Rover to detect the lunar soil and other components of our satellite. The window for the launch of Chandrayaan-2 is available till October 2018, which has already been reserved – just in case if the mission has to be rescheduled.
Chandrayaan-2 will be an extension of the previous moon mission and is loaded with a ton of indigenous technology, instruments, and equipment. The Chandrayaan-2 rover will be enclosed in a lander attached to an Orbiter. Once the spacecraft reaches the distance of 100 km over the lunar surface, the lander along with the rover will detach from the Orbiter. The lander will follow a strict descent trajectory & velocity for a soft landing after which, the rover will be deployed. Also, ISRO elaborated the details of the rover as per which, it will be a six-wheeled rover with semi-autonomous mode i.e. it will be controlled by ground commands as well as it will move around after calculating logically. The rover will host several indigenous and sophisticated instruments and probes especially developed for the mission which will further analysis the soil and a plethora of other aspects while on the surface of the moon.
So far, only USA, Russia and China have been successful to soft-land on the moon surface and if India makes it, it will be a huge achievement for ISRO and India, especially with a budget that is 20 times less than that of NASA. This could open up new possibilities because ISRO spokesperson said, “Even though Neil Armstrong had walked or, one can say, taken a stroll on the lunar surface in 1969 but it was left to India’s small Chandrayaan-1 space craft launched in 2008 that discovered the presence of water molecules on the parched lunar surface in 2009.” So everyone has high-hopes from Chandrayaan-2.
