India delays launch of unmanned moon lander

Only three nations have successfully landed spacecraft on the moon — the United States and the Soviet Union during the space race of the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently, China. (An Israeli nonprofit attempted to send a lander named Beresheet to the moon this year, but it crashed.)

India’s desire to become No. 4 will have to wait for now. Less than an hour before the scheduled liftoff time, the country’s space agency called off the launch of Chandrayaan-2, which was scheduled for the early hours of Monday, local time. A new launch date has not yet been announced.

The homegrown mission to the moon aims to demonstrate the technological achievements of one of the largest countries on Earth.

Liftoff had been scheduled for Monday at 2:51 a.m. local time from the Satish Dhawan Space Center along the southeastern coast of India. The spacecraft was mounted on India’s most powerful rocket, a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle — Mark III. But an unexplained technical problem, according to the Indian Space Research Organization, which is India’s equivalent of NASA, led to a postponement of the launch.

About 90 minutes before the scheduled launch, the Indian space agency said fueling of the rocket had been completed. But not long after, journalists in the Indian space agency’s media center noted that the countdown clock to launch had been frozen 56 minutes from the scheduled lift off.

Chandrayaan-2 had intended to touch down on the moon no sooner than Sept. 6, taking a slow, fuel-efficient path to the moon. The future landing date could depend on the timing of the next launch date.

The Indian spacecraft was planned to touch down where none has landed before: less than 400 miles from the forbidding south pole of the moon.

Fifty years after NASA’s historic Apollo 11 moon landing, a crop of extraterrestrial missions are being planned by the U.S., Chinese and other national space agencies, along with private initiatives financed by tech billionaires.

“Globally this is a pioneering mission for human habitation beyond Earth,” said Chaitanya Giri, a fellow of the space and ocean studies program at Gateway House, an Indian think tank.

The mission follows the 2008 launch of the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, which blasted a probe near the south pole that sent back information that helped confirm the presence of water molecules inside the craters, which have been shielded from sunlight for eons.

Six years later, an Indian satellite went into orbit around Mars. This year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the successful test of an anti-satellite weapon, India’s first non-civilian space initiative and a sign that the country – soon to surpass Britain to become the world’s fifth largest economy – aims to become a comprehensive space power.

The civilian missions have also won attention for being much cheaper than those of other countries, largely because of low labor costs. India’s space scientists are paid one-tenth the salaries of their NASA counterparts, according to Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, head of the nuclear and space policy initiative at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

India’s $74-million Mars mission cost roughly 11% of NASA’s Maven Mars orbiter.

India plans include additional robotic missions to Venus, Mars, the moon and the sun.

India is also working on flying its astronauts to Earth orbit on Gaganyaan, or “orbital vehicle.” A crewless test is scheduled for December of next year; the first flight with people aboard is scheduled for 2022.