San Francisco Chronicle

Experts assess technical snag that aborted moon mission

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NEW DELHI — India’s space organizati­on is examining the technical snag that led to the aborting of the launch Monday of a spacecraft intended to land on the far side of the moon, an official said.

The Chandrayaa­n2 mission was called off shortly before liftoff by the Indian Space Research Organizati­on — India’s version of NASA — when a “technical snag” was observed in the 640ton, 14story rocket launcher at the Satish Dhawan Space Center, near Chennai.

The Satish Dhawan Space Center sits in a remote coastal area, far from any cities, on an isolated spit of land, essentiall­y a barrier island. Feral cows and leopards roam freely. Several hundred journalist­s and dignitarie­s, including Ram Nath Kovind, India’s president, had flown in to watch the launch.

The spacecraft had been mounted on India’s most powerful rocket, a Geosynchro­nous Satellite Launch Vehicle — Mark III, which has successful­ly launched at least two times.

Vivek Singh, the ISRO’s media director, said the organizati­on should be able to choose a new launch date within days. He declined to go into details.

Chandrayaa­n, the Sanskrit word for “moon craft,” is designed for a soft landing on the lunar south pole and to send a rover to explore water deposits confirmed by a previous orbiting Indian space mission.

Pallava Bagla, science editor of New Delhi Television news channel, said that launch windows have to meet several technical criteria and it could take weeks or months for a new date.

He also said on his channel that the rocket and the satellite were safe, and the highly inflammabl­e liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen have been removed from the rocket.

The full details of what went wrong will be available when scientists can access the rocket and after a full analysis is carried out, he said.

Dr. K. Sivan, chairman of the ISRO, said last week that the around $140 million Chandrayaa­n2 mission was the nation’s most prestigiou­s to date, in part because of the technical complexiti­es of soft landing on the lunar surface — an event he described as “15 terrifying minutes.”

If India did manage the soft landing, it would be only the fourth country to do so after the U.S., Russia and China. New York Times contribute­d

to this report.

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