Chandrayaan-2: If successful, this would be India’s first soft landing on the moon’s surface. Only the US, the former USSR and China have been successful in landing humans or machines on the moon surface.
A month-and-half after it took off from the launch pad at Sriharikota, traversing a distance of over 3,84,000 km on a pre-defined path, Chandrayaan-2 is ready to face its moment of truth. Later tonight, its lander module, called Vikram, which has already detached itself from the main spacecraft and has been moving independently for the last three days, will begin what ISRO Chairman K Sivan has been repeatedly describing as “the most terrifying 15 minutes” of its journey — the final descent to the moon’s surface from the nearest point in its current orbit, which is just 35 km in vertical distance.
At the time it begins the descent, sometime after 1:30 am Saturday, Vikram would be travelling at about 6 km per second, or about 21,600 km per hour. That is about 30 to 40 times the average speed of commercial airliners, which usually travel at speeds between 500 to 900 km per hour. Within 15 minutes, Vikram would need to bring down its speed to 2 metres per second (about 7 km/hr) or lower to enable a safe landing.
If successful, this would be India’s first soft landing on the moon’s surface. Only the US, the former USSR and China have been successful in landing humans or machines on the moon.
Chandrayaan-2 has had a smooth journey so far, but it is not difficult to see why Sivan’s description of the final descent captures the essence of this journey. Just five months back, in April this year, an Israeli attempt to make a soft landing on the moon ended in failure. Its Beresheet spacecraft was unable to slow down sufficiently enough and crash-landed on the moon. Of a total of 109 missions to the moon so far — flybys, orbiters, landers, rovers and human landings — 41 have been unsuccessful. But it is also a fact that after the moon exploration resumed in the 1990s following a near two-decade lull, Beresheet has been the first and only failure.
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