Chandrayaan-2: Success in India's second attempt at launching Moon mission

CNN ^ | Helen Regan and Manveena Suri,

[BenLurkin]

The country's latest lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, which means "moon vehicle" in Sanskrit, took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh state at 2:43 p.m., Monday local time (5:13 am ET).

The launch was originally scheduled for July 15, but was abruptly called off just 56 minutes before lift-off due to a "technical snag." India is now on the way to becoming the fourth country -- in addition to United States, China and the former Soviet Union -- to make a soft-landing on the lunar surface.

The Chandrayaan-2, which weighs 3.8 tons and carries 13 payloads, has three elements -- lunar orbiter, lander and rover, all developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

It will travel for two months, before positioning itself in a circular orbit 62 miles (100km) above the moon's surface. From there, the lander -- named Vikram after the pioneer of the Indian space program Vikram Sarabhai -- will separate from the main vessel and gently land on the moon's surface near its South Pole.

A robotic rover named Pragyan (meaning "wisdom") will then deploy and spend one lunar day, or 14 Earth days, collecting mineral and chemical samples from the moon's surface for remote scientific analysis.

Over the next year, the orbiter will map the lunar surface and study the outer atmosphere of the moon.

[McGruff]

At least they’ll have good tech support.

[PIF]

Companies in the US are hiring them via H1B - there is no invasion - take a breath.

[Reno89519]

Guess you don’t work in IT or have friends and family that do. Whether US companies are being traitors or not, the end result is millions of Indians here in the US. Lyn’ Ted and others supported increase, there is a bill working through Congress to add even more and let them all stay. Americans lose. America loses.

[NCC-1701]

“...It will travel for two months, before positioning itself in a circular orbit...”

Why so long? It took our Apollo guys roughly three days to get there.

[BenLurkin]

"The mission is planned to fly on a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk III) with an approximate lift-off mass of 3,850 kg (8,490 lb) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre ...the Chandrayaan-2 stack would be initially put in an Earth parking orbit of 170 km perigee and 40,400 km apogee by the launch vehicle.[52] It will then perform orbit-raising operations followed by trans-lunar injection using its own power."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2#Design

[ADemocratNoMore]

OK, so I know that the picture here is an infographic from one of the fake news outlets and it’s probably harder to illustrate a soft landing with retro-rockets but seriously, what genius thought it would be a good idea to use parachutes to land on the moon ???