Chandrayaan-2 is all set to perform its most critical step in the space journey, as it readies for a lunar capture to enter the moon’s orbit. Chandrayaan-2 successfully entered the lunar orbit today after nearly 30 days of the journey in space.
ISRO said, “Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) manoeuvre was completed successfully today (August 20, 2019) at 0902 hrs IST as planned, using the onboard propulsion system. The duration of the manoeuvre was 1738 seconds. With this, Chandrayaan-2 was successfully inserted into a Lunar orbit. The orbit achieved is 114 km x 18072 km”.
The moon is revolving around the earth and its location is changing constantly. It takes nearly 27 earth days to complete one orbit around the earth, while at the same time rotating on its axis.
Chandrayaan-2 carrier so many payloads and would build on experiments conducted on the first mission. The most critical part for a future space mission is to study the distribution of water and minerals on the lunar surface.
If the mission is successful, India will become the fourth country to soft-land a rover on the lunar surface after Russia, US and China. As earlier, Israel failed in it, but India is the last nation to attempt a soft landing on the Moon.
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