Chandrayaan-2

Chandrayaan-2
Chandrayaan-2 lander (above) and orbiter
NSSDC ID	2019-042A
Mission goal	Investigation of the moon , moon landing and rover travel
Client	ISRO
Launcher	GSLV Mk III
construction
Takeoff mass	3850 kg
Instruments
Orbiters: 8, Landers: 3, Rover: 2
Course of the mission
Start date	July 22, 2019, 11:13 am ( UTC )
launch pad	Satish Dhawan Space Center SLP
07/22/2019 begin 08/20/2019 Arrival in lunar orbit 02.09.2019 Separation Lander 06.09.2019 Landing attempt 2026-2027 expected end of the orbiter mission

Chandrayaan-2 ( Hindi च्हन्द्रयान 'moon vehicle', Chandra for moon , yaan for car, vehicle ) is a lunar probe of the Indian space agency ISRO . It was launched on July 22, 2019. On September 2, a landing module separated , which instead of a planned soft landing on September 6, 2019, crashed onto the moon. The orbiter unit of the space probe, on the other hand, works as planned and is used scientifically.

India missed the target of becoming the fourth country - after the Soviet Union ( Luna 9 , 1966), the United States ( Surveyor 1 , 1966) and the People's Republic of China ( Chang'e-3 , 2013) - to place a probe softly on the lunar surface land.

preparation

Originally, Chandrayaan-2 was planned as an Indo-Russian cooperation in which the lander should be developed by Roskosmos . The mission should start in 2011 or 2012. However, after the Russian Mars mission Fobos-Grunt had failed at the end of 2011 and the development of the lunar lander was severely delayed as a result, ISRO decided in 2013 to carry out the mission alone. After that, the planned start date was postponed several times.

The cost of the mission added up to almost 10 billion rupees (about 130 million euros) up to the start .

construction

The probe consists of an orbiter and a landing platform called Vikram - named after the Indian space pioneer Vikram Sarabhai - with the rover Pragyan . The mass of the probe is 3850 kg, of which 2379 kg are accounted for by the orbiter and 1471 kg by the lander including the 27 kg rover.

The orbiter is equipped with eight instruments, including a camera each for high-resolution photography and a digital elevation model of the lunar surface. A mass spectrometer will analyze the thin lunar atmosphere and look for isotopes such as helium-3 , while the ionosphere will be examined with radio waves in the microwave range received by ground stations on earth. An infrared spectrometer and a synthetic aperture radar should confirm the presence of water on and below the moon's surface. In addition, the chemical composition of the surface should be determined with an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer . The orbiter is supplied with up to 1000 watts of electrical power via solar cells  .

The "Pragyan" rover

The landing platform has a seismograph for recording moonquakes , a Langmuir probe for examining the plasma envelope of the moon and a measuring instrument for the thermal conductivity of the moon's surface. Is at the top - as the lunar lander Beresheet a laser - retro-reflector attached, which by the Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA was provided. It is part of the NGLR ( Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector ) project of the University of Maryland and the Italian research institute INFN . The aim of this project is to place several reflectors with which lunar satellites and spaceships can determine their height above the lunar surface. The lander's solar cells provide 650 watts of electrical power.

The rover is to be supplied with up to 50 watts of power via solar cells . With two spectrometers he is to carry out chemical analyzes of the moon rocks on site. The rover reaches a speed of 1 cm / s (0.036 km / h) and can travel up to 500 meters.

Mission history

The launch took place on July 22, 2019 from the Satish Dhawan Space Center with a GSLV Mk III , the most powerful Indian launcher . The probe was first placed in a highly elliptical earth orbit , the apogee of which was gradually increased from 45,475 km to 142,975 km. A 17-minute engine run on August 14 put the probe on a transfer orbit to the moon. Four weeks after take-off, it entered a highly elliptical lunar orbit with the engine burning for just under 30 minutes. From there it was slowed down gradually to a 100 km high orbit - in reverse to the start from Earth. On the 48th mission day, September 6, 2019, Vikram was supposed to land between the Manzinus C and Simpelius N craters between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. CEST, i.e. at about 70 ° south latitude . The approach to this point was more demanding than the landing sites of all previous lunar missions because these are closer to the equator. The rover should begin a few hours later.

The crash site. Image of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

The descent towards the lunar surface initially went according to plan, but radio contact with the lander was lost at an altitude of 2.1 kilometers. A few hours later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the attempt to land had failed. The next day, ISRO announced that it had succeeded in photographing the lander with an orbiter's camera so that its crash position was known. Thereafter, unsuccessful attempts were made to contact the lander until the end of the lunar day, also with the support of NASA's Deep Space Network .

For the orbiter, a mission duration of one year was initially set. However, due to the planned reserves as well as a higher than expected take-off speed and correspondingly saved fuel, a much longer operation is possible. According to contradicting information from ISRO, the expected duration of the mission is almost seven or over seven and a half years. Lander and rover were only designed for one lunar day of operation, which corresponds to about 14 earth days. After that, their solar power supply would have failed.

See also

• Chandrayaan program , the Indian lunar space program
• Chronology of the moon missions
• Space exploration timeline
• List of visited bodies in the solar system

Web links

Commons : Chandrayaan-2  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• ISRO: GSLV-Mk III - M1 / ​​Chandrayaan-2 Mission (English)
• Chandrayaan-2 in eoPortal the ESA
• Chandrayaan-2 in the NSSDCA Master Catalog (English)
• Recording of the live broadcast of the moon landing attempt , video from ISRO on Youtube (English / Hindi)
• NASA pictures show the crashed landing module "Vikram"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stephen Clark: India launches robotic mission to land on the moon. In: Spaceflight Now. July 22, 2019, accessed July 25, 2019 . 
2. ↑ TS Subramanian: ISRO plans moon rover. In: The Hindu . January 4, 2007, accessed May 10, 2019 . 
3. ^ R. Ramachandran: Chandrayaan-2: India to go it alone. The Hindu, January 22, 2013, accessed August 5, 2014 . 
4. ^ Chandrayaan-2. Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Department of Space, August 14, 2013, accessed August 5, 2014 . 
5. ^ Chandrayaan-2 mission launch called off today due to technical snag. In: Times of India. July 14, 2019, accessed on July 15, 2019 . 
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} ISRO brochure on the start of Chandrayaan-2 , accessed on July 14, 2019 (PDF; 4.5 MB)
7. ^ Chandrayaan 2 payloads. ISRO, accessed on July 14, 2019 . 
8. Jump up ↑ Chandrayaan 2 Spacecraft . ISRO, accessed July 25, 2019.
9. ^ Chandrayaan2 Payloads - ISRO. Retrieved July 25, 2019 . 
10. ↑ Chelsea Gohd: 50 Years After Apollo, India Is Carrying a NASA Laser Reflector to the Moon (And It's Only the Start). In: Space.com. July 26, 2019, accessed September 7, 2019 . 
11. ↑ Indian spacecraft carries the first micro-reflectors to moon since Apollo era, triggers the next phase of lunar experiments . The Market Journal, August 3, 2019.
12. ↑ Next Generation Lunar Retroreflectors Should Fly Soon . Forbes, July 13, 2019.
13. ↑ ^{a b} India plans tricky and unprecedented landing near moon's south pole. In: Science . January 31, 2018, accessed July 14, 2019 . 
14. ^ TS Subramanian: Chandrayaan's rover and the moon rocks from Salem villages. The Hindu, May 11, 2014, accessed August 5, 2014 . 
15. ↑ ISRO press releases from July 22nd and August 6th, 2019.
16. ↑ Chandrayaan-2 landing module separation 12.45pm and 1.45pm Monday. In: Times of India. September 1, 2019, accessed on September 2, 2019 (English, times in Indian Standard Time ). 
17. ↑ Stephen Clark: Live coverage: Mission control loses contact with Indian moon lander - Spaceflight Now. In: SpaceflightNow. September 6, 2019, accessed on September 6, 2019 . 
18. ^ India's first attempt to land on the moon appears to end in failure . Spacelight Now, September 7, 2019.
19. ↑ Isro locates Chandrayaan-2 lander on Moon, but yet to make contact . India Today, September 8, 2019.
20. ↑ Indian landing probe "Vikram" localized on the moon orf.at, September 8, 2019, accessed September 8, 2019.
21. ↑ The sun is setting on Vikram lander but not on Chandrayaan-2. In: Al Jazeera . September 20, 2019, accessed September 20, 2019 . 
22. ^ Chandrayaan-2 may orbit Moon for 2 years. In: Times of India. July 28, 2019, accessed August 20, 2019 . 
23. ↑ Chandrayaan - 2 Latest Update . ISRO, September 7, 2019.
24. ↑ Orbiter will have a lifespan of 7.5 years, it's possible to find Vikram Lander from orbiter: Isro chief . Times of India, September 7, 2019.