Chandrayaan-2 moon launch delayed
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 early today. A new launch date has not yet been announced.
The homegrown mission to the moon that aims to demonstrate the technological achievements of one of the largest countries on Earth.
Liftoff had been scheduled for today 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, fuelefficient path to the moon. The future landing date could depend on the timing of the next launch date.
For people in India, the space program is a demonstration of their country’s emerging technological capabilities. The Chandrayaan-2 lander and rover will explore a spot near the lunar South Pole, which is an intriguing region that no one has seen up close yet. Water ice exists deep within eternally shadowed craters near the poles.
Chandrayaan-2 will be heading not into a crater but instead to a high plain between two craters.
As the 2 in Chandrayaan-2 indicates, India has already sent one spacecraft to the moon. The orbiter Chandrayaan-1, launched in 2008, operated for 10 months and helped confirm the presence of water ice in the lunar craters.
India also launched an orbiter to Mars in 2013 that continues to orbit the red planet, and in 2017, an Indian rocket deployed 104 satellites, a record for a single launch.
India’s space missions have cost a fraction of those from bigger space agencies like NASA and the European Space Agency, but they have also generally carried simpler payloads. That is also true of Chandrayaan-2, which cost less than $150 million.