SRIHARIKOTA: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch the country’s second unmanned Moon mission – Chandrayaan 2 – from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh at 2.51 AM on 15 July 2019.
The launch of Chandrayaan 2 mission will be live-streamed by the ISRO on its social media handles on Facebook and Twitter. The live streaming of the Chandrayaan-2 launch can also be watched on DD National channel (Doordarshan), YouTube, and ISRO’s official website.
The live streaming of the Chandrayaan 2 launch on Facebook, Twitter, Doordarshan, YouTube, and the official ISRO website will begin around 2:30 AM.
Live TV
According to ISRO chairman K Sivan, Chandrayaan 2 mission will be launched at 2:51 AM on July 15 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota onboard heavy-lift rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle – Mark III (GSLV Mk III), nicknamed as ‘Bahubali.’
About 16-minutes into its flight, the Rs 375-crore GSLV-Mk III rocket is expected to sling the Rs 603-crore Chandrayaan 2 into an Earth parking 170×40400 km orbit.
From there, it will be a long journey for the Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft carrying Lander ‘Vikram’ and Rover ‘Pragyaan’ will travel further to the moon. The distance between the earth and the moon is about 3.844 lakh km.
On September 6, the Lander Vikram is expected to make a soft landing on the moon and then Pragyaan will roll out to carry out in-situ experiments.
During the countdown, the rocket and spacecraft`s systems will undergo checks and fuel will be filled to power the rocket engines.
Chandrayaan 2 is India’s first rover-based space mission. The soft landing on Moon’s surface is likely to be on September 6 or September 7. One of the most complex missions attempted to date, Chandrayaan 2 weighs 3.8-tonne and consists of an orbiter with eight scientific experiments, a lander with three experiments, a rover with two experiments and an experiment from the US space agency NASA.
To date, ISRO has sent up three GSLV-Mk III rockets.
The first one was on 18.12.2014 carrying Crew Module Atmospheric Reentry Experiment. The second and third GSLV-Mk III went up on 5.2.2017 and 14.11.2018 carrying communication satellites GSAT-19 and GSAT-29 respectively.
Interestingly, GSLV-Mk III will be used for India’s manned space mission slated in 2022.
With the Chandrayaan 2 mission, India is trying to become the fourth country after the former Soviet Union, US and China, which have already launched their lunar missions successfully.
Source: Zee News