ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 completed the first stage of the Moon mission by successfully entering Geostationary Orbit at 181.65 km above sea level. This is an amazing achievement by ISRO and is a proud moment for India. After the last min abort of the previous launch attempt all eyes were on ISRO to make a successful launch in a extremely tight launch window of only a few minutes. ISRO Chief K Sivan, made the following statement after the launch
I’m extremely happy to announce that the GSLVMkIII-M1 successfully injected Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft into Earth Orbit. It is the beginning of a historic journey of India towards moon and to land at a place near South Pole to carry out scientific experiments:
Now that the rocket has achieved Geo-Stationary orbit it will start orbit-raising operations followed by trans-lunar injection using its own power. Post that the rocket will head out to the Moon and below are the different phases of Chandrayaan 2’s journey:
- July 22 to August 13: Chandrayaan 2 will orbit around the Earth in an elliptical path
- August 13 to August 19: Course change to to establish into moon’s orbit
- August 19: Enter Moon’s orbit
- August 19 to Aug 31: Chandrayaan 2 will revolve in the Moon’s orbit
- September 1: The Lander Vikram will detach from the Orbiter heading down to land near the South Pole of the Moon
- ~September 7:Lander Vikram will make a soft landing in the south polar region of the moon
- ~Landing + 4hours: Rover Pragyaan will roll out of the Lander Vikram and perform different tests on the Moon’s polar surface
@ISRO, a proud nation salutes you and here’s to the journey to new horizons.
BBC Coverage: Chandrayaan-2: India launches second Moon mission
Regards,
Suramya