Chandrayaan 2: Crucial soft landing process on Sept 7

Chennai: The crucial process of taking up soft landing of the lander ‘Vikram’ onboard the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft that is currently in the lunar orbit will be taken up in the early hours of September 7, ISRO Chairman K Sivan said on Thursday.

Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation in Bengaluru would be engaged in this process which is expected to be completed by 1.55 am, he told reporters at the airport here.

“It is expected to make a soft landing (on the surface of the moon) at around 1.40 am and completed by 1.55 am. At the global level this is an important mission. It is being keenly watched by everyone,” he said.

Elaborating about the complexity involved, he said the speed of the spacecraft needs to be brought down to ‘zero.’

In a major milestone for India’s second Moon mission, the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft successfully entered the lunar orbit on Tuesday by performing Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) manoeuvre.

The second Lunar bound orbit manoeuvre for the spacecraft was successfully performed on Wednesday.

There will be three more orbit manoeuvres to make the spacecraft enter into its final orbit passing over the lunar poles at a distance of about 100 km from the Moon’s surface.

ISRO has said subsequently the lander will separate from the Orbiter (on September 2) and enter into a 100 km X30 km orbit around the Moon.

Then it will perform a series of complex braking manoeuvres to soft land in the South polar region of the Moon.

The rover is set to make the soft landing on the Moon on September 7 and if successful the mission would make India the fourth country after Russia, the US and China to achieve the feat.