[ad_1]
The moment of judgment has finally arrived for India's most daring lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2. On Tuesday, August 20, almost a week after leaving Earth's orbit, the probe will be inserted into a lunar orbit before an unprecedented soft landing.
The insertion is tentatively scheduled between 8:30 and 9:30 Tuesday, announced the president of the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro), K Sivan. Although it is a "difficult" maneuver, Isro is ready. The spacecraft, says Sivan, is working as expected.
The good health of the spacecraft should give Isro a huge dose of confidence as he launches the Chandrayaan-2 liquid engine to activate the orbit insertion motion. But this will only be the beginning of a complex set of maneuvers that will follow.
The mission composite incorporating an orbiter, the Vikram lander and the Pragyan mobile will be gradually lowered by means of four maneuvers in orbit. Once the spacecraft has reached the orbit of about 100 km from the lunar surface, Vikram will separate from the orbiter on 2 September.
The LG will undertake two additional maneuvers in orbit before Isro embarks on the most critical task of gently landing the satellite near the South Lunar Pole on Sept. 7. After the launch of Chandrayaan-2 on July 22 aboard the GSLV Mk-III Mk1 vehicle from Sriharikota, it would be a final that would change the game.
On August 14, the mission entered the lunar transfer path (a trajectory defined between the Earth and the Moon) after five maneuvers of elevation of the Earth's orbit.
The spacecraft's health is now being tracked continuously from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX) located on the Isro telemetry, tracking and command network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru. The Far East Indian Network (IDSN) antennas at Byalalu are also part of the surveillance system.
Chandrayaan-2 will win its success once its footprints are on the lunar surface. But this task would be anything but simple. The descent of the Vikram lander himself should suffer "15 minutes of terror," as Sivan had said at the launch.
Once the descent started, Vikram would fall to an altitude of about 7.5 km from the Moon's surface in less than 11 minutes. The speed of descent will be reduced gradually, but within 100 m of the surface, Vikram would stop to hover and survey the surface to determine if she is fit to land.
The images captured by the onboard cameras of the LG will be transmitted to the control centers orbiter and terrestrial.
The soft landing maneuver is initiated only when the data analysis shows that the chosen area is sufficiently suitable to land and sufficiently flat for the Pragyan mobile to deploy.
[ad_2]
Source link