ISRO To Launch A New Mission To Land A Probe On Chandrama By November 2020
It was a tryst which eluded success at the last second. Though the entire Chandrama mission was a grand success and is still supplying a load of data, the crowning glory was snatched at the last second.
The Chandrayan reached the destination and went into lunar orbit as planned. Then the Vikram Lander was launched and it successfully glided from a height of 30 kilometres to 5 kilometres. After this “rough braking,” the lander experienced trouble during the “fine braking,” the final stage in which the lander operated only one of its thrusters and slowed down to just 146m per second.
Then suddenly without warning the lander veered off its trajectory and crashed 750m away from the intended landing spot. The impact of the crash damaged the machinery on board and the lander went into silent mode.
The Indian Space Research Organisaiton (ISRO) designed Chandrayaan 2 to soft-land Vikram Lander with a rover on Chandrama, but the Vikram Lander lost control 500m short of the lunar surface and crashed.
Efforts are on to locate the lander that was supposed to analyse the Lunar terrain and send back data for 14 days. The glitch was unexpected since the software was functioning well throughout the trial period.
A last-minute software malfunction led to the failure of the Chandrayaan 2 mission. Vikram Lander crash-landed on the surface after its guidance software went bust according to an internal report presented to the Space Commission.
ISRO’s internal committee, led by Liquid Propulsion System Centre director V. Narayanan, examined the available data. The committee was also supplied information from space agencies such as NASA.
Now the ISRO has put in place a mission to rectify the mistakes and re launch Chandrayaan 3 next November. The agency will build a new lander and rover, which will be linked to the Orbiter that is rotating around Chandrama.
