Indian Space Research Organisation, popularly known as ISRO had attempted to put Chandrayaan 2 into lunar orbit today precisely at 9 am and had a successful insertion process.
ISRO Chairman K. Sivan has updated the status of Chandrayaan 2 through a live media conference today. He informed the media that the lunar orbit insertion maneuver was carried out at 9 in the morning for about 30 minutes and Chandrayaan 2 had successfully entered the orbit around the moon.
Chandrayaan 2 was scheduled to take off on July 18 but due to certain problems, the take-off was canceled. On June 22, Chandrayaan 2 was launched successfully and it took off to start its journey towards Moon. After almost 30 days of space travel, Chandrayaan 2 has successfully entered into the lunar orbit and is nearing to its destination.
Chandrayaan 2 will explore the dark side of the moon and send information to ISRO; if the mission is successful, India will be making history for being the first country to reach out the far side of the moon.
Yesterday, during the lunar orbit maneuver the Moon also came closer around 3 pm. ISRO has made an official announcement through an official blog post and stated that the Lunar Orbit Insertion maneuver was completed successfully today and it took nearly 1738 seconds to enter into moon’s orbit. The orbit that Chandrayaan 2 achieved is 114 km X 18072 km precisely.
Thereafter a series of maneuver will be performed by the spacecraft to enter its final lunar orbit passing at the distance of about 100 km from the moon’s surface. The next lunar orbit maneuver is scheduled for tomorrow between 12:30 to 13:30 hours IST. There will be four more lunar bound orbit maneuvers from August 22 to September 1.
The ISRO chairman informed the media today that Chandrayaan 2 is going around the moon with the inclination of 88 degrees and eventually it will achieve inclination of 90 degrees when the orbit will be brought down.
The spacecraft received a major milestone today. The maneuver that took around 30 mins. Put it in defined orbit in the perfect manner. Now it will be going around the moon with inclination of 88 degrees – K. Sivan, Chairman, ISRO
The Chandrayaan 2 team is continuously monitoring the activities of the spacecraft to ensure its safety. An official ISRO report stated:
The health of the spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru with support from Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) antennas at Bylalu, near Bengaluru. All the systems of Chandrayaan 2 are healthy.
The next major event will be on September 2 when the lander will be separated from the orbiter and will enter into a 100 km X 30 km orbit around the Moon. On 3rd September there will be a small maneuver of 3 seconds to ensure the working condition of the lander is normal.
After that the lander will be performing some complex braking processes to soften the landing of the spacecraft in the South polar region of the moon, the ISRO report suggested.
Today at the press conference, ISRO Chairman K. Sivan also enlightened the media about the future landing process of Chandrayaan 2. He said that on 4th September there will be a maneuver of 6.5 seconds when the lander will be reaching 35 km X 77 km near the lunar surface.
Finally on 7th September around 1:40 the power descend of the lander will start and at 1:55 the lander will land on the lunar surface at 71 degrees south of the equator and 22.8 degrees east. 2 hours later the ramp of the lander will be touching the ground. At 3:10 the solar panel will be deployed and at 3:15 the lander will start to move around. Around 4 hrs after the landing, the lander will touch the lunar surface and will make India proud.
