Chandrayaan 2, India’s second moon mission, is slated to create history in the wee hours of Saturday when its ‘Vikram’ module makes a soft landing on moon’s south polar region.
It is first time that a country is attempting to land on the south pole area of the moon. Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft is a composite module mission consisting of orbiter, lander and rover.
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Here is timeline of the historic mission-
September 18, 2008
The then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Cabinet approved the Chandrayaan 2 lunar mission. The subsequent years went into mission planning and execution with home-grown technology used for the expedition.
July 15, 2019
The launch of Chandrayaan 2 was called off about an hour before the launch due to technical snag.
July 22, 2019
ISRO successfully launched Chandrayaan-2 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
July 24, 2019
First earthbound orbit-raising manoeuvre for Chandryaan-2 spacecraft performed successfully.
July 26,2019
Second earthbound orbit-raising manoeuvre for Chandryaan-2 spacecraft performed.
July 28,2019
Third orbit-raising manoeuvre performed.
August 3, 2019
ISRO released the first set of earth pictures captured by Chandrayaan 2
August 6, 2019
Fifth and the last orbit-raising manoeuvre performed
August 14, 2019
After revolving around the earth’s orbit for nearly 23 days, the spacecraft entered the Lunar Transfer Trajectory.
August 20, 2019
Chandrayaan-2 successfully inserted into lunar orbit.
August 22,2019
ISRO released first moon image captured by Chandrayaan 2’s LI4 Camera.
Take a look at the first Moon image captured by #Chandrayaan2 #VikramLander taken at a height of about 2650 km from Lunar surface on August 21, 2019.
Mare Orientale basin and Apollo craters are identified in the picture.#ISRO pic.twitter.com/ZEoLnSlATQ
— ISRO (@isro) August 22, 2019
September 1, 2019
The fifth and lunar manoeuvre executed successfully.
September 3, 2019
The first de-orbiting manoeuvre performed successfully in four seconds.
September 4, 2019
The second de-orbiting manoeuvre executed in nine seconds.
September 7, 2019
The Vikram lander of Chandrayaan 2 scheduled to soft-land on moon between 1.30 am and 2.30 am on Saturday. It will be followed by the rollout of rover ‘Pragyan’ between 5.30 a.m and 6.30 a.m.
(With ANI inputs)