India Successfully Launches Chandrayaan 2

India’s ambitious moon mission ‘Chandrayaan 2’ successfully lifted off from its launch pad at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh at 2:43 pm on Monday carrying a giant heavy-lift rocket. The success came after a long wait, as the mission was aborted just 56 minutes before liftoff, last Monday.

As the rocket was launched, Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s control room closely watched while gradually it gained speed and headed towards the outer atmosphere, propelled by the massive thrust from the powerful 640 tonne rocket.

A few minutes later, the rocket successfully placed Chandrayaan 2 into the Earth’s orbit, the scientists welcome the success with a booming applause that reverberated inside the control room. The scientists who have been working hard for the mission emotionally congratulated each other.

Amidst loud applause from the scientists gathered around him at the control centre, ISRO Chairman K Sivan said, “I am extremely happy to announce that GSLV Mark 3 successfully injected the Chandrayaan 2 into orbit. It is the beginning of a historical journey for India. We fixed a serious technical snag and ISRO bounced back with flying colours”.

The GSLV Mark 3 is the ISRO’s largest and most powerful rocket. It is 44 metres long or we can say it is as tall as a 15-storey building. After the launch, the rocket propelled into space an orbiter, a lander ‘Vikram’ named after ISRO founder and eminent Indian scientist Vikram Sarabhai and a moon rover ‘Pragyaan’.

Once the Vikram lander separated from rocket, it headed towards a region, which is unexplored till date on the moon, as most of the lunar mission landings have taken place in either the equatorial region or in the northern hemisphere.

A space mission by Chinese explorers landed in the northernmost part of the moon followed by Russia’s Luna missions. Meanwhile, most of the US lunar landings, including Apollo missions, took place in the Moon’s equatorial region.

Now, with the success of Chandrayaan 2 mission India also become the fourth nation after the US, Russia and China to pull off a soft landing on the moon.

On the success of Chandrayaan 2, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also tweeted, “Special moments that will be etched in the annals of our glorious history! The launch of #Chandrayaan2 illustrates the prowess of our scientists and the determination of 130 crore Indians to scale new frontiers of science. Every Indian is immensely proud today!”

Last Monday, the mission was stopped just 56 minutes and 24 seconds before its scheduled launch after a technical snag was found in the unmanned launch vehicle system. ISRO later said that the decision was taken “as a measure of abundant precaution”. The ISRO chairman also said that, Chandrayaan 2 is the “most complex mission ever undertaken by ISRO”.

After the soft landing on the moon, the rover will now carry out various in-depth searches, which include the thorough mapping of the moon’s resources including minerals. It will also look for the presence of water on the moon in abundance and it will click, high-resolution images as well.

 

The 1,000 crore-moon mission involving the project Chandrayaan 2 is also a success story, which is going to be an inspiration for India’s future space missions. As the ISRO’s budget is less than 1/20th of USA’s NASA.