Apollo was the NASA program that resulted in American astronauts’ making a total of 11 spaceflights and walking on the Chandrama. The first human landing on Chandrama landing took place in 1969. The last landing was in 1972.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been preparing for its second mission to Chandrama since quite sometime. However recently it announced the postponement of its much-awaited second Chandrama mission — Chandrayaan 2. The mission was earlier expected to be launched in October this year but ISRO will now conduct it in the first quarter of 2019.
“We are aiming to launch the mission on January 3 next year, but the window to land on the Chandrama surface is open until March 2019. Chandrayaan-2 mission is the most complex mission attempted by ISRO so far. The mission has three components — orbiter, lander, and rover. We set up a committee of eminent scientists from across the country which studied the project and suggested changes. It is nothing less than the Apollo mission,” ISRO Chairman K. Sivan told reporters in Bangalore.
ISRO has increased the weight of Chandrayaan-2 by 600 kg as the space scientists had noticed during experiments that after the moon lander was ejected, the satellite would shake. So they decided that design modification was required for landing and the mass had to be increased. The total estimated cost of the mission is about Rs. 8 billion, which includes Rs. 2 billion as the cost of launching and Rs. 6 billion for the satellite.
As pointed out by ISRO, it needs to be kept in mind that the success rate of Chandrama landing missions have been less than 50% as 27 had failed out of 47 lunar landings.
