This Day, That Year – July 22

This day in history we feature Chandrayaan-2. The spacecraft was launched on its mission to the Moon on this day in 2019.

Trivia – Chandrayaan-2

Chandrayaan-2 is the second lunar exploration mission developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), after Chandrayaan-1. It consists of a lunar orbiter, and also included the Vikram lander, and the Pragyan lunar rover, all of which were developed in India. The main scientific objective is to map and study the variations in lunar surface composition, as well as the location and abundance of lunar water.

Related read – NASA is on course to crash the ISS in 2031.

The craft reached the Moon’s orbit on 20 August 2019 and began orbital positioning manoeuvres for the landing of the Vikram lander. The lander and the rover were scheduled to land on the near side of the Moon. India would have been the fourth country to have landed a spacecraft on the Moon—after the United States, Russia, and China. However, just before Vikram was to touch down on the Moon, contact was lost at an altitude of 2 km.

About Chandrayaan-2

Chandrayaan-2 mission is a highly complex mission, which represents a significant technological leap compared to the previous missions of ISRO, which brought together an Orbiter, Lander and Rover with the goal of exploring the south pole of the Moon. This is a unique mission which aims at studying not just one area of the Moon but all the areas combining the exosphere, the surface as well as the sub-surface of the moon in a single mission.

Source – Wikipedia/Britannica

This day in history – Chandrayaan-2