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DPA
New Delhi
India is seeking to join an elite club of spacefaring nations that have touched down on the Moon with the launch of its first Moon landing mission early on Monday.
The unmanned mission called Chandrayaan-2 - which means ‘Moon vehicle’ in Sanskrit and comprises an orbiter, lander and rover - is expected to touch down on the unexplored lunar south pole on September 6 or 7.
Chandrayaan-2 is the country’s second lunar mission. The first mission, Chandrayaan-1, launched in 2008, orbited the Moon but did not land.
Chandrayaan-2, due for lift-off from the southern spaceport of Sriharikota, will “boldly go where no country has ever gone before - the Moon’s south polar region,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement.
ISRO chairman K Sivan said the 15-minute final descent “will be the most terrifying moments as India has never undertaken such a complex mission” of landing a probe on a cosmic body.
If India succeeds in the mission, it will become the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China.
The 142-million-dollar mission will map the lunar surface, examine its composition and search for water.
India’s Moon mission comes at a time when there is renewed global interest in lunar science. The US is pushing to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024 while Israel and China also launched missions to Earth’s closest neighbour this year.
The Chandrayaan-2 launch comes a day before the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon.
New Delhi
India is seeking to join an elite club of spacefaring nations that have touched down on the Moon with the launch of its first Moon landing mission early on Monday.
The unmanned mission called Chandrayaan-2 - which means ‘Moon vehicle’ in Sanskrit and comprises an orbiter, lander and rover - is expected to touch down on the unexplored lunar south pole on September 6 or 7.
Chandrayaan-2 is the country’s second lunar mission. The first mission, Chandrayaan-1, launched in 2008, orbited the Moon but did not land.
Chandrayaan-2, due for lift-off from the southern spaceport of Sriharikota, will “boldly go where no country has ever gone before - the Moon’s south polar region,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement.
ISRO chairman K Sivan said the 15-minute final descent “will be the most terrifying moments as India has never undertaken such a complex mission” of landing a probe on a cosmic body.
If India succeeds in the mission, it will become the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China.
The 142-million-dollar mission will map the lunar surface, examine its composition and search for water.
India’s Moon mission comes at a time when there is renewed global interest in lunar science. The US is pushing to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024 while Israel and China also launched missions to Earth’s closest neighbour this year.
The Chandrayaan-2 launch comes a day before the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon.
