What happened to Chandrayaan 2, any hope or just a failure?
(This blog covers the latest news on Chandrayaan-2 and is created as a part of my University’s Assignment )
Brief History of Race to the Moon
We all know that race to the moon was first started in 1959 by the soviet union, in which they sent many satellites to the moon. Luna 1 (photo left side)was the first spacecraft to reach the Moon. The main aim of these satellites were to research its atmosphere, surface, any sign of life, etc.
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Before we talk about the news, better we will first know what is Chandrayaan-2 and its the prime mission?
India finally, contributed to the research mission of the moon by sending Chandrayaan-1 to the moon on Oct-2008. Chandrayaan is Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) mission the most important information gathered by the Chandrayaan-1 was “It discovers water on the Moon” but it is not in the liquid form. The word “Chandrayaan”, which means “Moon vehicle” is derived from Sanskrit.
Now, to explore moon little more we launched Chandrayaan-2 on 22 July 2019. The primаry objective of Chаndrаyааn-2 is to demonstrаte the аbility to soft-lаnd on the lunаr surfаce аnd operаte а robotic rover on the surfаce. Scientific goаls include studies of lunаr topogrаphy, minerаlogy, elementаl аbundаnce, the lunаr exosphere, аnd signаtures of hydroxyl аnd wаter ice.
Chandrayaan-2 was comprised of an orbiter and a soft lander carrying a “Pragya” rover.
Now, What was the whole plan??
The landing site for the Chandrayaan-2 was the dark and cold side of the moon, Why? Because it is very much less explored and has the highest probability of getting frozen water on the upper surface of the moon. this experiment would be conducted by rover after that it will send the results to the earth through satellite.
the lifetime of the rover is 14–18 days.
Till now only 3 countries have successfully landed a rover to the surface of the moon, they are USSR, USA, and China.
What went wrong?
So what exactly happened to chandrayaan 2 and what was the issue?
So, Everything was working good since chandrayaan 2 entered into the lunar orbit on August 20. On September 7, Vikram lander successfully separated from the orbiter and start moving toward the surface of the Moon slowly and steadily but, suddenly about 2.1 Km above surface of the Moon, Isro lost the connection between Vikram Lander and Orbiter which was resulted in a free-fall and eventually a crash landing.
Status till now (21- September- 2019) is, the Orbiter working 100% fine it is still revolving around the Moon and gathering and sending all the information back to the Earth.
The only problem occurred with the Vikram Lander, its job was to get separate and perform a soft landing on the surface of the Moon but, unfortunately, this results in a crash landing. There was “Pragya” rover, inside the lander whose job was to perform scientific experiments on the Moon.
Some of you might have thoughts that “What is the process of soft landing that we missed here ?”, well here Vikram lander have four 800-N liquid thruster Engines which controls its movement and help lander to land safely. All this process was manually controlled from the Earth.
Is Chandrayaan 2 is a failure?
A big “NO”, Chandrayaan 2 is not a failure, as till now there are about 38 soft-lаnding аttempts mаde on the moon аnd only аbout hаlf hаve succeeded. Indiа hаd hoped its Chаndrаyааn-2 mission would mаke it the fourth nаtion to lаnd on the moon аfter the United Stаtes, Russiа аnd Chinа”.
Again, this mission consists of two-phase Orbiter and Lander, Orbiter is working fine it is capturing the images and sending back to earth this means we can continue our exploration surface of the moon.
