Tonight will be a historic moment
for India if everything goes as planned. Chandrayaan 2 carrying moon orbiter,
lander and rover was launched on 22nd July from Sriharikota. Few minutes after
launch, rocket has injected the Chandrayaan 2 module into earth orbit. After being placed into a 45,475×169 km parking orbit by the
launch vehicle (ApogeexPerigee
- farthest point from earth vs closest point in the elliptical orbit ),
scientists at satellite control center at Bangalore applied 5 oribit-raising
maneuvers from 24th July to 13th August using onboard propulsion systems, each
time raising its orbit to reach closer to the moon. These are extremely
elliptical oribts around the earth to achieve slingshot like action. On 3
August 2019, the first set of Earth images were captured by the LI4 camera on
the Vikram lander on its way to the moon, showing North
American landmass. Finally after 5th orbital maneuver on 13th Aug, the
spacecraft was finally at the farthest point from earth(Apogee) at
142,975 km.
29 days after launch, on 20th Aug,
the Chandrayaan 2 carrying the lander and orbiter module was inserted into
lunar orbit over polar regions when moon gravity captured the spacecraft at a
distance of 18,072 km. Then a series of orbit-lowering maneuvers were performed
on the module to lower the spacecraft's orbit to reach closer to the surface of
moon. Finally, on 2nd Septemeber at 7:45 UTC, vikram lander seperated from the module and said good bye to the orbiter
at 100 km above moon and lowered its orbit to just 35x101 km around the Moon
for south pole landing. At 1:55 am tonight (7th Sep,2019), as Vikram lander makes a descent to
land on the moon, it
is going to be a 15 minutes of terror when the lander attempts to land. Why?
Please wait for my next feed.
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