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India to Launch Combined Orbiter/Lander/Rover Mission

posted by martyb on Sunday June 16 2019, @06:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the Chandrayaan,-landers-in-de-skies dept.

RandomFactor writes:

The India Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in July is planning to launch a triple-threat mission to the Moon. The Chandrayaan-2 mission, will launch July 14 at 5:51 p.m. EDT (2151 GMT).

The Chandrayaan-2 mission will include an orbiter, a lander "Vikram" and a rover "Pragyan".

After launch, Chandrayaan-2 will spend about 16 days orbiting Earth, raising its orbit slowly over time before heading to the moon, the Times of India reported. It should take the mission about five days to reach the moon, after which Chandryaan-2 will spend 27 days in lunar orbit before releasing the Vikram lander.

If all goes well, Vikram will touch down near the moon's south pole on Sept. 6 in what promises to be a harrowing 15-minute landing sequence, ISRO officials have said.

"The 15-minute operation - in which Vikram makes the final descent and soft-lands - will be the most terrifying as we have never attempted such a complex mission," ISRO chairman K Sivan said in a June 11 press conference according to the Times of India.

The solar-powered Vikram is expected to deploy the small Pragyan rover about four hours after landing. Together, the lander and rover are designed to last about one lunar day (14 Earth days) on the moon's surface, while the Chandrayaan-2 orbtier[sic] continues its mission for a full year, according to an ISRO overview.

Similar to the ill-fated Beresheet lander, the Vikram lander is carrying

a NASA experiment called the Laser Retro-reflector Array for Lunar Landers, a mirror-like device designed to reflect laser signals that can be used to pinpoint the Vikram lander's location and measure the distance between the Earth and moon.

In all the Orbiter, Lander, and Rover carry 13 different scientific instruments between them to study the moon from orbit and the surface, 8 of which are on the orbiter and will continue functioning long after the lander and rover.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Sunday June 16 2019, @08:02AM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Sunday June 16 2019, @08:02AM (#856197) Journal

    Originally a joint ISRO-Roscosmos project:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2 [wikipedia.org]

    On 12 November 2007, representatives of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and ISRO signed an agreement for the two agencies to work together on the Chandrayaan-2 project. ISRO would have the prime responsibility for the orbiter and rover, while Roscosmos was to provide the lander.

    The Indian government approved the mission in a meeting of the Union Cabinet, held on 18 September 2008 and chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The design of the spacecraft was completed in August 2009, with scientists of both countries conducting a joint review.

    Although ISRO finalised the payload for Chandrayaan-2 per schedule, the mission was postponed in January 2013 and rescheduled to 2016 because Russia was unable to develop the lander on time. Roscosmos later withdrew in wake of the failure of the Fobos-Grunt mission to Mars, since the technical aspects connected with the Fobos-Grunt mission were also used in the lunar projects, which needed to be reviewed. When Russia cited its inability to provide the lander even by 2015, India decided to develop the lunar mission independently.

    Russians can be street shitters too if you pump enough vodka into them.

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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @08:33AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @08:33AM (#856205)

    Yet they still defecate in public. Millions of people have limited or no access to an acceptable level of healthcare or food or clean water.
    They insist on sending rockets to space at a cost of billions while their people live in squalor.
    Well done, India.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @09:36AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @09:36AM (#856212)

      What makes you think most Indians don't have access to healthcare or food or clean water? Oh right, the Indian population is skyrocketing NOT because they have better access to healthcare, food and clean water than they had under British Raj, but because they just fuck like sewer rats that they are. Isn't it? Indians trying to get into space - is there no place left for superior humans?

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Sunday June 16 2019, @11:07AM

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Sunday June 16 2019, @11:07AM (#856226) Journal

      What you fail to realize is that they've created the perfect society with high tech at the top and a squalid, starving underclass as the labor force.

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