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India was supposed to launch today a rocket that would send a machine on the surface of the moon, which would make it the fourth country to do so if successful. But with 56 minutes remaining in the countdown, everything stopped because of a "technical problem". It's hard to get to the moon.
The Apollo program is getting bigger day after day. The last human being on the moon was Gene Cernan, in 1972. Not only was the United States able to bring twelve people to the lunar surface and come back safely, but they had done so on six missions distinct. The Soviets tried and failed to go to the moon themselves, leaving a legacy of disaster whose full story we will never know. Nobody had really tried until recently, China having landed on a rover in 2013.
The race for space between the Soviets and the United States has been remarkable for many reasons, of course, and perhaps the most remarkable for the Soviet Union, since this country has put the first man in space less two decades after being devastated by the Second World War. Each country started from scratch, but the Soviets started from almost zero.
India's ambitions have been evident for some time now, and the new hurdle comes after an Israeli non-profit organization crashed on the moon in April. On Saturday, it will be 50 years since Neil Armstrong made his famous landing and nearly 47 years since Cernan.
The failure of India is a good reminder that this shit is difficult.
Via the New York Times:
"I was alert and attentive and watched what was happening with a hawk's eye," said Pallava Bagla, a renowned science journalist who attended the launch at the Satish Dhawan Space Center near Chennai. "A beautiful moon shone through the clouds and asked the rocket to go there. But then there was confusion. Everyone was trying to understand what was wrong. The excitement was very strong. "
[…]
In the end, Indian scientists announced that nothing disastrous had happened, but that the long-awaited launch was to be postponed following the discovery of a "technical hitch" when filling the rocket with cryogenic fuel . They were studying impressions and quantities of data, they said Monday morning, and would provide more information as soon as they would have it.
The mission of India was called Chandrayaan-2, or Hindi for "lunar vehicle". It was to explore the South Pole of the Moon, where the ice is below the surface. This will probably still be the case, however, when the Indian Space Research Organization – the group responsible for the government-funded launch – could not say it.
The fact that the United States has placed on the surface of the moon a dozen men with computers whose power was exponentially lower than that of an iPhone is the coolest thing we have ever done.
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