NEW DELHI, India, Aug 14 (NNN-PTI) – The final orbit raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft was successfully carried out earlier on Wednesday (today), according to a statement by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
“With this, Chandrayaan-2 entered the Lunar Transfer Trajectory,” ISRO said in the statement.
Earlier, the spacecraft’s orbit was progressively increased five times during July 23 to Aug 6, 2019, ISRO said.
Since its launch on July 22, 2019, by GSLV MkIII-M1 vehicle, all systems on board the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft are performing normally, it said.
Chandrayaan-2 will approach Moon on Aug 20, 2019, and the spacecraft’s liquid engine will be fired again, to insert the spacecraft into a lunar orbit. Following this, there will be a further four orbit manoeuvres, to make the spacecraft enter into its final orbit, passing over the lunar poles at a distance of about 100 km from the Moon’s surface, the statement said.
Chandrayaan-2 sent the first set of pictures of the earth earlier this month.
If successfully carried out, India would become the fourth country, following the United States, Russia and China, to make a soft landing on the moon surface.
The nearly 150-million-U.S. dollars’ worth of Moon Mission, aims at gathering data on water, minerals and rock formations, on the lunar surface.– NNN-PTI
