India’s most revered space mission Chandrayaan-2 had been the talk of the nation for the past couple of days. The mission was targeted at landing a rover on the Southside of the moon which was not attempted by any of the nations previously. The mission would put India alongside the three nations, (United States, Russia, and China) that have soft-landed on the moon.
After Chandrayaan-1, a mission aimed at launching India’s probe on the moon through impact, Chandrayaan-2 was the second lunar exploration project undertaken by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 2007. The mission was approved by Indian Government in 2008 and after many years of tedious work and ups and downs, finally was ready by 2019 and was launched on 22nd July 2019.
Chandrayaan-2 carried a lunar Orbiter, a Lander and a Rover. The Lander which was supposed to be provided by the Russian Federal Space Agency previously was later developed in India itself, as Russia cited its inability to provide the lander by 2015. The objective of the mission was to soft-land the lander named Vikram on the moon after which the Robotic Rover “Pragyaan” will be operated on the moon’s surface collecting various kinds of data.
Vikram Lander was supposed to soft-land on the moon on September 7th between 01:30 and 02:30 AM. The landing of Vikram Lander was broadcast on the National Television Channels live. ISRO lost contact with the Lander just before 2.1 km from the surface of the moon. Later it was informed that the location of the lander was found using Thermal Imaging but the damage to the lander was still unknown.
The project had approximately cost a 1000 crores and many revered scientists from across the country have worked on it. Sr. Mylswamy Annadurai was the Project Director for Chandrayaan-2, Ritu Karidhal is the Mission Director, Muthayya Vanitha the Project Director, Chandrakanta Kumar and Amitabh Singh are the Deputy Project Directors in Radiofrequency and Optical Payload Data Processing respectively. The mission took place under the leadership of the ISRO Chief Dr. Kailasavadivoo Sivan.