The country’s latest lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, is set to take off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh state at 2:43 p.m., Monday local time (5:13 am ET).
The launch was originally scheduled for July 15, but was abruptly called off just 56 minutes before lift-off due to a “technical snag.” If successful this time, India will become the fourth country — in addition to United States, China and the former Soviet Union — to make a soft-landing on the lunar surface.
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It will travel for two months, before positioning itself in a circular orbit 62 miles (100km) above the moon’s surface. From there, the lander — named Vikram after the pioneer of the Indian space program Vikram Sarabhai — will separate from the main vessel and gently land on the moon’s surface near its South Pole.
A robotic rover named Pragyan (meaning “wisdom”) will then deploy and spend one lunar day, or 14 Earth days, collecting mineral and chemical samples from the moon’s surface for remote scientific analysis.
Over the next year, the orbiter will map the lunar surface and study the outer atmosphere of the moon.
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