Vijayawada : Considered to be one of the trickiest operations in the mission, Chandrayaan-2 successfully manoeuvred into the lunar orbit in the early hours of Tuesday. After nearly 30 days of space travel, India’s moonshot completed the move in 1738 seconds. “Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) manoeuvre was completed successfully today (August 20, 2019) at 09:02 hrs IST as planned, using the onboard propulsion system. With this, Chandrayaan-2 was successfully inserted into a Lunar orbit. The orbit achieved is 114 km x 18072 km,” read the statement released by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
Addressing the media, Dr K. Sivan, Chairman of ISRO said that the approach velocity was just right and the altitude over the moon rather precise. “A higher-than-expected approach velocity would have bounced off the spacecraft into deep space, while a slow approach would have led to the moon’s gravity to pull Chandrayaan 2 and crash it on the lunar surface. Even a small error would have killed the mission,” he noted. ISRO has also announced that Lander Vikram will soft land on Moon on September 7, 2019. The spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru with support from Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) antennas at Bylalu, near Bengaluru.
A week after it was aborted due to the technical glitches, Chandrayaan 2 had lifted off from India’s spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on July 22. This mission took prominence with just about Rs. 1,000 crore spent which is considered to be less when compared to similar projects by other countries.