India fires rocket to moon on successful second shot
SATISH DHAWAN SPACE CENTRE, India — India is on its way to the moon.
One week after a first attempt was canceled at the last minute, the Chandrayaan-2 mission blasted off at 2:43 p.m. Monday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India’s southeast coast, carrying an uncrewed lunar lander and the dreams of a nation.
The 142-foot, 700-ton rocket rose on a funnel of fire, ripping through the air perfectly straight and surprisingly fast before vanishing into a thick bank of clouds.
A roaring thunder echoed across the sky.
“The mission has been successfully accomplished.” blared a message from loudspeakers at mission control.
If the rest of the mission goes as well, India will become the fourth nation — after the United States, Russia and China — to land on the moon, more than 200,000 miles away. Its target is a region near the mysterious south pole, where no other missions have explored.
This would be a huge leap forward for India’s ambitious space program, and scientists and defense experts everywhere are watching to see whether the country can pull it off.
So are countless Indians. There are few things as unifying for a nation as a successful space program, and, over the past few weeks, Chandrayaan-2 posters have popped up everywhere and schoolchildren have been hunched over mini-Chandrayaans made from empty plastic bottles, learning the physics of rocketry.
The timing could not be better. This weekend was the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the anniversary coverage has fanned lunar fever around the world.
The mission includes four components: a giant Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle — Mark III rocket (though it is much shorter and lighter than the Saturn V rocket that lifted the Apollo missions); an orbiter; a lander and a sixwheeled rover.
The purpose is to probe the south pole of the moon for the possibility of water ice and to study deposits of helium-3, believed to be a future energy source for Earth.