India’s Chandrayaan-2 launch delayed due to “technical snag”
The launch of India's second lunar mission has been halted less than an hour before the scheduled blast-off, due to a technical problem.
The countdown stopped 56 minutes before the launch after a "technical snag was observed in launch vehicle system," India's space agency said.
The satellite had been scheduled for launch at 02:51 local time on Monday (21:21 GMT Sunday) from Sriharikota space station on India's eastern coast.
A new launch date will follow soon.
What is this mission all about?
India hopes the $150m mission, Chandrayaan-2, will be the first to land on the Moon's south pole.
It will focus on the lunar surface, searching for water and minerals and measuring moonquakes, among other things.
If successful, India will become the fourth country to make a soft landing on the Moon's surface.
Only the US, China and the former Soviet Union have been able to do so.
India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has championed the country's space programmes, but critics would like to see poverty at home tackled first.
India's space agency is yet to give more details on why the launch was delayed and how it will affect the timeline.
The country's first lunar mission in 2008 - Chandrayaan-1 - did not land on the lunar surface, but it carried out the first and most detailed search for water on the Moon using radars.
How will it get to the Moon?
Chandrayaan-2 (Moon vehicle 2) will attempt a soft landing near the little-explored south pole of the Moon.
India is using its most powerful rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk-III), in this mission. It weighs 640 tonnes (almost 1.5 times the weight of a fully-loaded 747 jumbo jet) and at 44 metres (144ft) is as high as a 14-storey building.
The lander (named Vikram, after the founder of Isro) weighs about half as much, and carries within its belly a 27kg Moon rover with instruments to analyse the lunar soil. In its 14-day life, the rover (called Pragyan - wisdom in Sanskrit) can travel up to a half a kilometre from the lander and will send data and images back to Earth for analysis.
After the scintillating finals of Wimbledon and the Cricket World Cup over the weekend, people watching at home were eagerly waiting for the next spectacle – India‘s Chandrayaan-2 launch. However, they will have to wait at least a few more days, as the country’s space agency, ISRO, has delayed the launch due to a “technical snag.”
The launch was originally slotted for 15 July 2.51 AM IST (5 PM ET) from Sri Harikota Space Centre in India. The Chandrayaan-2 was headed for the moon and was supposed to land on the surface on September 6.
But officials from the Indian Space Research Organization called off the launch just 56 minutes before the lift-off when they found an issue during a routine check on the rocket. The team decided to take “abundant precaution” and delay the launch. ISRO officials told IANS they found the impediment when cryogenic fuel was being loaded in the rocket. The agency hasn’t provided any other details regarding the decision.
While ISRO promised to announce the new launch date soon, it’s worth noting the current launch window expires on July 16 (tomorrow). That’s not a lot of time to fix a major issue with the launch vehicle, and so it’s likely that the Chandrayaan-2 will take off only during September when the next window opens up.
The space agency is being extremely careful about the mission it’s already spent Rs. 1,000 crores ($145.9 million) on. Chandryaan-2 is India‘s second moon mission after the Chandrayaan-1 – an orbiter that was launched in 2009. With this new mission, India hopes to become only the fourth country after USA, Russia, and China to soft-land a rover on the moon. For now, we’ll have to wait at least a few more months to see if the country can join the exclusive club.
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