Chandrayaan-2 mission launch rehearsal completed, performance normal: Isro

NEW DELHI, Jul 20, 2019, India Today. The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Saturday said that the launch rehearsal of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, which will be launched at 2:43 pm on July 22, has been completed. The space agency also said that the technical glitch, due to which the launch of Chandrayaan-2 on July 15 was aborted, has been fixed, reported the India Today.

The Chandrayaan-2 was scheduled to be launched on July 15. However, less than an hour before the launch, the mission was aborted after a technical snag was detected in the rocket.

Earlier in the day, former Isro Chairman AS Kiran Kumar said that the Chandrayaan-2 mission is ready to be launched on July 22.

“Chandrayaan-2 is now ready for launch on 22 July. We intend to move towards the moon on August 14 and land on the moon around September 6. All the activities are in full swing and we are getting ready for the event on July 22,” AS Kiran Kumar said.

Talking about the technical snag due to which the launch of the lunar mission was aborted last week, he said, “One of the issues, any system of this magnitude, we keep testing to various levels and during one of the levels we found that there was a shortcoming. So, that has been overcome. We are ready to go now.”

Chandrayaan-2, which has home-grown technology, will explore a region of the Moon where no mission has ever set foot.

The spacecraft consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover together referred to as “composite body”. The probe’s total mass is 3.8 ton and it is expected to land on Moon’s South Polar Region on September 6 or 7 this year.

It will be the first Indian expedition to attempt a soft landing on the lunar surface. This mission will make India the fourth country after the US, Russia and China to carry out a soft landing on the Moon.

(With inputs from ANI)