Chandrayan-2-where to watch ISRO’s Moon touchdown
BANGALURU :There is nervous excitement in the air, as scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) prepare for the final phase of Mission Chandrayaan-2, here on Friday.
The success of the Chandrayaan 2 mission will make India the fourth country after the US, Russia and China to pull off a soft landing on the moon.
At 1:40 am, the Lander Vikram will begin the 15 minutes-powered descent. If all steps go according to plan, it would be on the lunar surface by 1:55 am.
The premier space agency tried to capture the hopes of billions of Indians with a cartoon shared via its Twitter handle, wishing Lander Vikram “Best of luck, so it safely reaches the lunar surface.”
ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation’s) will telecast the updates on its website, isro.gov.in from its control room at the Satellite Control Centre (SCC) in Bengaluru. ISRO’s Twitter handle will also be tweeting live updates every minute.
The landing can also be watched live at press information bureau of India’s YouTube channel at 1.10 am IST on 7 September.India looks to create history by becoming the first nation to reach closest to the moon’s south pole.
Chandrayan-2 lander Vikram and rover Pragyan are just hours away from landing on the Moon’s unexplored South Pole. If everything goes according to the ISRO plan, India will enter the exclusive club and become the fourth country after Russia, the US and China to land on the moon.
Earlier in the week, ISRO carried out series of successful orbit manoeuvres to bring the landing module in to its final orbit.Chandrayaan 2: Date and time of landing
The Chandrayan-2’s Vikram lander will touch down on the Moon’s surface on September 7 at 1:55am. The Vikram lander will begin its descent at 1:40am from a height of 35 km above the lunar surface.
During the descent, the velocity of the lander will be around 6,000 kmph and it will drop to a height of 7.4 km above the moon altitude in just over 10 minutes. The engines will be shut down well before the lander touches the moon’s surface.
On July 22, the Rs 978 crore Chandrayaan-2 was launched on the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV Mk III). The rover Pragyan will roll out from the moon lander between 5:30 am and 6:30 am, the ISRO said.
It will carry out research, including a thorough mapping of the moon’s resources, looking for the presence of water and clicking high-resolution images as well. The space agency’s Chairman K Sivan has called Chandrayaan 2 the “most complex mission ever undertaken by ISRO”.
“We’re going to land at a place where no one else has gone before. We’re confident about the soft landing. We’re waiting for tonight,” Mr Sivan told news agency ANI. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and schoolchildren will see the historic landing live from the space agency’s control room.
An older mission by China landed in the northernmost part, followed by Russia’s Luna missions. Most of the American lunar landings, including Apollo missions, were in the moon’s equatorial region. China currently has a rover on the dark side of the moon.
ISRO says other nations are also investing resources to reach the moon’s south pole. The moon’s craters in the south pole have been untouched by sunlight for billions of years – offering an undisturbed record of the solar system’s origins. Its permanently shadowed craters are estimated to hold nearly 100 million tons of water.
Considering ISRO’s budget is less than 1/20th of USA’s NASA, a success story for the Rs. 1,000-crore moon mission, which cost less than Hollywood blockbuster ‘Avengers: Endgame’, would be a giant boost for India’s space plans.(With Agency Inputs ).
