Destination moon

Destination moon

If Chandrayaan-2 succeeds in its mission, Indian space science will have proved its mettle.

Indian space science is inching towards a historic feat with the Chandrayaan-2 Moon mission entering its last and crucial phase. It will be recalled that Chandrayaan-2 was successfully launched on July 22 with Isro’s GSLV MK-III-M1 rocket. Subsequently the 3,840 kg spacecraft, comprising an orbiter, a lander and a rover, left Earth orbit on August 14 and was transferred to a Moon orbit through a manoeuvre called trans lunar insertion. Then in the last few days, the lander – christened Vikram – successfully separated from the orbiter and was put in a lower Moon orbit. Finally, on September 7, Vikram will attempt to soft land near the south pole of the Moon.

If that is successful, the rover Pragyan will roll out of the lander and begin conducting experiments on the lunar surface. With that India will become only the fourth country to put a rover on the Moon and the first to reach the Moon’s south pole in its first attempt. Additionally, Chandrayaan-2 is expected to enhance our understanding of our natural satellite and the origins of our solar system. In fact, one of the objectives of the mission is to further findings of its predecessor Chandrayaan-1, which in 2008 had confirmed the presence of water on the Moon.

And if Chandrayaan-2 does find substantial reserves of Moon water along with any other valuable minerals in lunar soil, it would be contributing towards the creation of a future Moon colony. All of this on a budget – Rs 978 crore – that is less than what it cost to make the Hollywood movie Interstellar. Thus, Chandrayaan-2 could be the model for low-cost Moon missions of the future. As the entire nation waits for the historic soft-landing – a complex manoeuvre that Israel failed to pull off earlier this year – India’s second Moon mission has already set the tone for the proposed Indian manned space flight by 2022.