‘Ill-Fated’ Chandrayaan-2 Set For New Launch Date

Date: July 22 (Monday). Time: 2.43 PM.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday announced the new launch date and time for Chandrayaan-2, India’s most ambitious space project till date.

“Chandrayaan-2 launch, which was called off due to a technical snag on July 15, 2019, is now rescheduled at 2:43 pm IST on Monday, July 22, 2019,” ISRO tweeted.

On July 15, the mission to land a spacecraft on the moon was called off less than an hour before the launch. A technical snag was detected in the GSLV-MkIII rocket. While ISRO did not specify it, there were indications that there was a problem in the upper stage of the rocket carrying the cryogenic engine.

#History Of Glitches

This was not the first time that the ambitious lunar mission had to be called off.

2010/2011: Chandrayaan-2, which has an orbiter, lander and rover component, was originally scheduled to be launched as early as in 2010 or 2011, immediately after the Chandrayaan-1 mission in 2008.

At that time, it was supposed to be a joint India-Russia mission, with Russia contributing the lander and rover, while ISRO was to provide the launcher and the Orbiter. The planned mission could not take off because of design flaws detected in the Russian lander and rover.

2017: The Russians eventually pulled out of the collaboration, leaving ISRO to build its own lander and rover. That took time, and the mission was finally ready by 2017.

2018: The mission was initially slated to be launched last year, but was postponed at least twice due to unavailability of a suitable window of opportunity to land on the moon.