Isro to launch Chandrayaan-2 by mid-April 2019

BENGALURU: The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Friday confirmed that India's second mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-2, will not be launched before April-end.


The initial plan was to launch it in the first available window in January and February. TOI had reported in the last week of December that the space agency did not have a launch date in the said window even as the year was ending.

On Friday, Isro chairman Sivan K said: "Because we could not complete a few tests we are now looking at the March-April. And generally in this window, April last week is considered best."

In case Isro misses this window, the mission will get pushed to June.

Chandrayaan-2, which missed two planned launch windows in 2017 and 2018 is being readied to be launched in the window from January 1 week to February 16. “Unlike a mission to Mars, we will not have to wait for two years to launch this in case the window passes. But we are confident of launching it in the first window. The work is progressing well,” Sivan had earlier told TOI.

He said that the agency was busy with multiple launches in the second half of 2018, which affected work on the moon mission, and reiterated that they’ll launch it in the first available window.

This mission, unlike Chandrayaan-1, involves a Lander soft-landing on the lunar surface and unloading a Rover to study and take measurements from the Moon, while the orbiter will go around the Earth’s satellite. Initially, the project was to be a joint mission with Russia, whose space agency Roscosmos was to supply the lander. However, that deal fell through and Isro decided to go solo.

And after years of design and development, the entire project was reconfigured, which has prompted several changes to multiple systems, which the Chandrayaan team is working on.

New plan

As per the first plan, the lander was to gradually go down from 100-km and reach 18-km from the Moon’s surface. From there, the orientation would change, making the lander go slightly horizontal for about 8.5-km when the orientation and velocity would further change to make the soft landing.

However, the new plan now is to make the lander go around the Moon in an elliptical orbit before landing. It will be a 100x30 (100km on one side and 30 on the other) elliptical orbit.

In fact, Sivan had earlier told TOI that the mission can now be called Chandrayaan-3. Pointing out that the earlier mission was ill-configured, he said: “You can say that this is Chandrayaan-3 as the project has been reconfigured completely. If we went with the previous configuration it would have been a disaster.”

Pending work

From re-analysing the temperature fluctuation causing expansion or contraction of the rover ramp panel to estimating the clearance between Vikram (the lander) and the fifth engine—which has been added as per the new configuration—there are several last minute work that is still pending.

“The orbiter is ready. But the The qualification model of Vikram is yet to be tested. In the last review meeting held in the last week of November, more than 30 things had to be assessed,” a source said.

As reported by TOI earlier, there were other issues like the extended solar panel blocking the rover from the sun when it rolled out of the lander that Isro has had to resolve.