New Delhi | Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday congratulated Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and its women-led team for making the ambitious moon mission Chandrayaan-2 launch a reality, bringing India closer to become the fourth country in the world to soft-land a spacecraft on the lunar surface. ‘Many congratulations to ISRO and its women-led team that made the ambitious moon mission Chandrayaan 2 launch a reality, bringing India closer to become the fourth country in the world to soft-land a spacecraft on the lunar surface,’ Mr Goyal said in a tweet.
In a prestigious and challenging second lunar mission, India’s heaviest rocket GSLV-MkIII-M1, carrying 3,850 kg Chandrayaan-2–aiming for a soft landing on the Moon South Pole–lifted off from the Sriharikota Range (SHAR) Range in the afternoon. After a 20-hour countdown, the 43.43 m tall rocket, with a lift off mass of 640 tonnes, soared into the skies from the Second Launch Pad at 1443 hrs, belching orange fumes and with a rumble that shook the earth.
The launch was earlier scheduled on July 15, but was deferred to a technical glitch, which, however, was rectified. India’s first Lunar Mission Chandrayaan-1 was launched using a PSLV on October 22, 2018 and it detected presence of water on the Lunar surface.
While the technical difficulties of landing on the Moon’s South Polar region have deterred many previous attempts, Chandrayaan-2 will be the first to reach this part of the lunar surface–taking the Indian tricolour where no human has been before.
