Everything You Need To Know About ISRO’s Chandrayaan 2 Mission

The Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO for short is the official space agency of the Government of India. It has been credited for developing space exploration missions at an extremely low budget. ISRO announced a while ago that its next mission, the Chandrayaan 2 will be launched on the 15th of July. The successor to the extremely successful Chandrayaan-1 mission from the year 2008, the upcoming launch has a lot to be excited about. Here is everything you need to know about the Chandrayaan 2 before its flight to outer space.

• It is the first Indian space campaign to attempt a soft landing on the surface of the Moon.
• If the launch is successful, India will become the fourth country ever in the world to do a soft landing on the Moon. The ISRO performed a controlled crash landing from the Moon Impact Probe that was a part of the Chandrayaan-1 mission in the year 2008.
• The Chandrayaan 2 mission will carry a lander, a rover and several other payloads to the surface of the Moon.

• The mission will be India’s first rover based space mission. This means it is the first time the country is sending a vehicle to explore and collect data from the surface of the Moon.
• The Chandrayaan 2 will be the world’s first attempt at reaching the south polar region of the Moon. Talk about setting records in space!
• The launch vehicle used by ISRO for the mission will be a GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) Mk III. It is a three-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by the space organisation. The GSLV Mk III is India’s most powerful launcher to date and has been completely designed and fabricated from within the country.

• The lander of Chandrayaan 2 is called Vikram and has been named after the father of the Indian Space Programme Dr Vikram Sarabhai. The lander is developed to function for a duration of 1 lunar day. A day on Moon is roughly equivalent to 14 days on Earth.
• The star of the mission, the Pragyan rover is an AI-powered, robotic vehicle with a total of six wheels. The name translates to wisdom in Sanskrit.

• Chandrayaan 2 will make a soft landing on the surface of the Moon on the 6th of September this year.
• The total duration of the Chandrayaan 2 mission is one year, the time in which the rover will collect all the necessary data required from the Moon’s surface.

How to watch the launch:

The Chandrayaan 2 mission will launch on the 15th of July at 2:51am at the ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. Unfortunately, registrations for watching the event live from the centre have been closed. however, interested people can still watch the event live, which is expected to be telecasted from ISRO’s social media channels.