India’s first attempt at landing a semi-autonomous rover near the lunar south pole, originally set to launch this April, will have to wait for at least six more months, thanks to additional tests suggested by experts. “Being a very complex mission with a lander, rover, and an orbiter, more critical tests are planned,” said Dr. Arun Sinha, former senior scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). This delay, however, is not the first for Chandrayaan-2.
Back in 2007, ISRO and Russia’s federal space agency, Roscosmos, signed an
agreement for a joint lunar mission. At the time, ISRO took up responsibility for the orbiter, while Roscosmos planned to oversee the lander and rover. The initial launch of Chandrayaan-2, which was originally slated for 2015, was delayed due to the failure of the
Phobos-Grunt mission in 2011.
Phobos-Grunt was an attempted Russian mission that aimed to return a sample from Phobos (one of Mars’ moons), but ultimately
ended up in the Pacific. Soon after the crash landing, it came to light that Roscosmos had used similar technical aspects in both its martian and lunar missions, resulting in a predictably high risk of failure for Chandrayaan-2. Russia’s withdrawal from the agreement put the Chandrayaan-2 mission in stasis for a few years until India could build its own rover and lander.
Dr. Sivan, ISRO’s chairperson, recently told the
Times of India that this year’s launch, which was originally scheduled for April 23, had to be put off once again due to ongoing tests that would require at least 20 more days to finish. Unfortunately, unlike launching a spacecraft into orbit around Earth, deferred lunar missions have to wait quite a while for their next ideal launch period.
“Launch date is only once a month. [But] if ISRO launches the mission during May through September, [the] full lunar day (14 Earth days) cannot be utilized for experiments on the Moon due to eclipses. Hence the mission will launch in October first week,” said Dr. Sinha.
Both the delays have already led to a gap of 10 years between the two Chandrayaan missions. The first, Chandrayaan-1, was launched in October 2008, and included a lunar orbiter and an impactor — a probe intended to crash into the lunar surface to eject sub-surface soil for analysis.
Once in orbit, the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft released the Moon Impact Probe, which struck the Moon’s south pole near the Shackleton crater, making India the fourth country to leave a mark on the Moon — after the US, former Soviet Union, and China. The probe’s crash released underground soil, which was then analyzed by the orbiter for traces of water. The mission discovered that water signatures appeared stronger at the Moon’s higher latitudes.
However, just a year into the mission, the orbiter suffered technical issues, causing it to lose contact with ISRO for a full seven years until
NASA eventually found it. Though the mission had to be cut short long before the end of its intended two-year duration, Chandrayaan-1 was still India’s first mission to the Moon and made history with its
discovery of widespread water on the lunar surface.
