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Indian engineers on Sunday canceled the launch of Chandrayaan 2's moon landing mission after observing a "technical hitch" during the last hour of the countdown, the Indian space agency said.
The robotic probe was taking off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center above the GSLV Mk.3 rocket in India at 21:21 GMT (Sunday morning), or at 2:15 pm local time Monday in India.
"A technical problem was observed in (a) a launch system an hour before launch," tweeted the Indian space research organization. "As a precautionary measure, the launch of Chandrayaan 2 has been canceled for today. The revised launch date will be announced later. "
ISRO has not published any additional information on the reason for postponement of the launch. IANS, an Indian news agency, announced that the GSLV Mk.3 rocket should be drained of its liquid propellants and returned to the Satish Dhawan Space Center's vehicle assembly building on the southeast coast of India. for further investigation.
According to IANS, this process will take 10 days before officials can solve the problem and prepare for a new launch attempt.
In May, ISRO officials said the targeted launch window for the Chandrayaan 2 mission opened this month runs from July 9 to Tuesday, July 16 (Monday, July 15 in the United States). Chandrayaan 2 missed a series of previous launch windows as engineers completed construction and mission tests, which included orbiter, undercarriage and rover elements that would separate after their arrival on the moon.
Once the flight takes off, the GSLV Mk.3 rocket will inject the 8,887-pound (3,877-kilogram) Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft into an elliptical orbit spanning more than 39,000 kilometers around the Earth. Chandrayaan 2 will use its own propulsion system to climb into its orbit and free itself from its gravitational hold, with orbiting the Moon about three weeks after takeoff.
Once in lunar orbit, Chandrayaan 2 will move closer to the moon before separating the landing craft from the orbiter.
If the mission was launched on Sunday, the landing on the moon was scheduled for September 6. A new landing date will depend on when the mission leaves Earth.
The $ 142 million Chandrayaan 2 lander is aiming for a landing on an unexplored site near the moon at 70.9 degrees south latitude, closer to the south pole of the moon. than any previous probe. The landing module is named Vikram for Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian space program, and will deploy the Pragyan rover, named after the Sanskrit word meaning "wisdom."
The stationary Lander and Rover are designed to last 14 days – the equivalent of a half-day lunar – until the sun sets on the landing site. , depriving vehicles of electrical energy, temperatures dropping to near minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 183 degrees Celsius). . The rover and the lander carry a series of scientific instruments, including cameras and spectrometers, to measure rock composition at the landing site.
If the landing is successful, India will become the fourth country to achieve a soft and controlled touch on the moon, after the landings of the Soviet Union, the United States and China.
The Chandrayaan 2 Orbiter will conduct its own one-year scientific mission, taking high-resolution cartographic imagery and continuously scanning shadowed craters at the lunar poles with dual-frequency radar to help better locate ice deposits. 'water.
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