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from the maybe-the-south-pole-is-made-of-cheese dept.
Chandrayaan-2 Launch: How to Watch First Mission to the Moon's South Pole:
India's exploration mission to the moon is readying for launch. The Chandrayaan-2 mission, aiming to put robots at the lunar south pole for the first time, has suffered several delays leading up to lift-off. It was originally scheduled for July 14 but the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) postponed the departure less than an hour before launch due to a "technical snag."
The landmark mission is now set to depart from India's Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, north of Chennai, at 2:13 a.m. PT (5:13 a.m. ET), Monday July 22. [...] Chandrayaan-2 is carrying three lunar exploration robots that will be able to survey the moon from both the surface and the sky.
The payload of Chandrayaan-2 consists of a lunar orbiter, a lunar lander and a lunar rover and will be launched atop the ISRO-developed GSLV Mk-III rocket. That rocket is about half as powerful as the SpaceX Falcon 9 and will put Chandrayaan-2 into what's known as an "Earth parking orbit" before the module uses its own power to extend that orbit and eventually position itself for a lunar rendezvous.
Want to tune in to the historic mission? ISRO will handle livestreaming duties across its social media pages, which means you could tune in at the ISRO Twitter or follow along on the agency's Facebook page. The agency's YouTube channel is also covering the event.
The launch is also to be carried by the Indian public broadcaster Doordarshan's YouTube channel.
Previously: Scrubbed Chandrayaan 2 Mission to Moon's South Pole to Launch on Mon July 22 0913 UTC.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22 2019, @03:50AM (1 child)
The orbit-raising maneuver helps keep missions like this cheap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2#Design [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 22 2019, @08:40AM
And long.
Have time to spare?:You need less powerful propulsion. Less powerful propulsion means less heat to deal with and maybe this means less complicated and lighter systems.
On the other side, longer missions mean more time in which the things can go wrong. Think on the line of butterfly wing flapping as a cause for hurricanes, i.e. small initial perturbations diverge more over longer times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford