Chandrayaan2 meaning moon vehicle took a liftoff from Sriharikota base on the humongous space launch vehicle GSLV MK III M1. The launch was aired live and ISRO even invited registrations for willing to come and watch it on site. The Chandrayaan 2 is already into the Earths parking orbit and next needs to go through some critical stages before being maneuvered to enter next phases of its mission. An alteration in the course is also on the cards so that the aircraft could reach the moons polar region within 48 days instead of 55. The date of landing would not be changed though as per ISRO and only the critical procedures needed to meet the aforementioned requirements would be probed into by the space probe at ISRO.
The maneouvers Chandrayaa n2 has to undergo in the next 1.5 months before its soft landing are complicated ones and 15 in number as per K Sivan, the chairman of ISRO. The Vikram lander is scheduled to touch base the moon surface on September 7, 2019. Here’s a run-down through some of the critical stages the Chandrayaan will have to go through uptil September 7, 2019.
July 22 Launch – August 13
In order to raise its orbit the Chandrayaan 2 will undergo atleast 5 manoeuvers over the upcoming 24 days within the earth’s orbit. The earth’s parking orbit is 170 x 29120 km the orbital path around the earth in its elliptical orbit with perigee of 169.7 km and apogee of 45475 kms.
August 13 – August 20
Chandrayaan 2 will leave the earth’s orbit for the lunar orbit transfer trajectory. This will be a 7 day ordeal.
August 20 – September 2
Chandrayaan 2 will enter the lunar orbit and start the moon orbit. The orbit circle is 100 x 100 km and it would involve a series of orbits. On September 2, it the Vikram Lander with the Rover Pragyan will detach from the orbiter and set off to the moon by orbiting it for over 5 days on a decent course.
September 7
This would be the Vikram landers final phase for landing on the lunar surface. Once the lander is able to find a suitable spot for landing, it will manage a soft landing in 20-30 minutes. The attached cameras will help the lander from landing into a crater. After a hault of 4 hours post landing, the Rover Pragyan will roll out from vikram and start exploring the lunar surface extremely slowly though. The orbiters work will continue for one long year while the two modules will work for 1 lunar day which is equal to earths 14 days.
*Sourced from the Internet
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