Lander and rover of Chandrayaan II spacecraft being tested and assembled by ISRO scientists at ISITE. Reveals it for the first time to the media in Bengaluru on Wednesday, June 12
Bengaluru: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K Sivan has said that the Chandrayaan II, country’s second moon mission would be launched on Monday, July 15 at 2:51 AM.
Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, June 12, he said that due to technical difficulties they were unable to launch the second moon mission but now that they were prepared with all tests in place. The Chandrayaan II will take off on July 15.
He also said that India in future would depend more on planetary missions.
Explaining about the mission, Sivan said, “The landing on the moon would be either on September 6 or 7, which also happens to be the beginning of a fresh lunar calendar.”
“Both lander and rover instruments will be functioning for one full lunar day and also conduct scientific experiments”, he added.
Quoting the amount invested on the mission, Sivan said that the project was of Rs 603 Crore which mainly included satellite, support of foreign agencies and navigation facility.
Throwing light on the missions’ technical aspects, he said that the launch would be carried out using the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk III). The mission would also be consisting an orbiter, lander and rover which compiled together would be referred to as ‘composite body.’ Chandrayaan II system’s total mass would be 3.8 tonne in which propeller itself would be of 1.3 tonne.
Giving an idea on the launch process, Sivan said that the GSLV Mk III vehicle would launch the composite body into the extrinsic orbit within 15 minutes from launch and in further 16-days-time there would be five burns using propellants. He said that this process was a crucial one as this would help in pushing the composite body towards the moon. The composite body would be covering 3.8 lakh km distance from earth to moon, which would take five days before reaching the surface of the moon.
He said that another retro-burn would be observed in the orbit of the moon and the lander would separate from the orbiter which would stay for four days.
