It is India’s turn to try and reach for the stars as they prepare for the launch of Chandrayaan-2. After several delays, Chandrayaan-2 is finally set for a launch in July.
Chandrayaan-2 Launch Date
A decade after Chandrayaan-1, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is now ready to bring Chandrayan-2 to the moon. In a press release, the agency announced that the spacecraft will finally be launching between July 9 and 16, 2019, depending on the weather conditions, which means that it will hopefully make its landing on the moon two months later on Sept. 6.
Initially, the Chandrayaan-2 was supposed to launch last year, but it was delayed several times to conduct further tests.
Should Chandrayaan-2 succeed, it will be the fourth nation to successfully land on the moon after the United States, Russia, and China. Just last month, Israel’s Beresheet made a near-successful landing that failed at the last minute due to a glitch.
Chandrayaan-2 Mission
Chandrayaan-2 includes three modules, the lander, the rover, and the orbiter, all of which were developed in India and each with its own scientific missions to carry out on the lunar surface. For the rover and lander, the missions are expected to run for about 15 days, but the orbiter will be on a yearlong mission.
Should Chandrayan-2 make a successful landing, one of its missions would be to try and detect the presence of water on the moon, while the instruments on the six-wheeled rover will be useful in analyzing lunar soil.
Evidently, the lander is set to make a soft-landing on the south pole of the moon, which is an area that has not been explored by any other nation before. This means that if the mission succeeds, India will not only be first to explore that part of the moon, but they will also have the chance of naming it.
