JULY 21, 2019 • THE WEEK 19the moon does not have an atmos-
phere, water is not present in liquid
form.
While Vikram can make direct
contact with India’s Deep Space
Network to transmit its findings,
Pragyan will report to Vikram. As
both of them are largely solar-pow-
ered, they are expected to have a
working life only as long as they get
the sun—14 earth days. The orbit-
er, though, has a mission life of one
year. It could, however, go on and
on, like MOM, which has far out-
lived its mission life of six months
and continues to send data to earth
even four years later.
Chandrayaan-2 has taken 11
years to be realised, having faced
several setbacks. It started with the
termination of a joint exploration
with Russia after the country’s Fo-
bos-Grunt mission failure in 2011.
Russia was supposed to provide the
lander, and so following the termi-
nation of the deal, ISRO was forced
to develop it from scratch. This took
time. ISRO had planned for an
April launch last year, but a review
revealed the landing was untidy, kicking up too much dust. So,
back to the drawing board it went for a design correction. Then,
the scope of the mission itself was expanded, and the payload
became so heavy that the launch vehicle had to be changed from
a GSLV-II to a GSLV-III, which is India’s most powerful rocket.
Chandrayaan-2 is the first product of India’s expanding space
vision, which is getting more ambitious. ISRO is planning a hu-
man space flight, Gaganyaan, for 2022 to commemorate India’s
75 years of independence. Soon after that, it plans to establish a
Little India on a low-earth orbit, its own space station. Though
still a concept, the plan is to have a station where Indian astro-
nauts can park themselves for a considerable duration of time to
conduct experiments.
Today, satellites go to Sriharikota in a state-of-the-art Satel-
lite Transport System that protects them from earthly damages
like shocks, dust, heat and humidity. The first rocket that IndiaLOCKED AND LOADED
Chandrayaan-2’s lander, Vikram,
is hoisted before being mounted
on the orbiter (right), at the
launch centre in Sriharikotadamage. ISRO chairperson K. Sivan calls the 15
minutes it will take Vikram to land on the moon
as the most “terrifying” moments of the mission.
ISRO has already had one experience of a bad
test landing at the simulator in Chitradurga in
April, which damaged the legs of the lander.
Vikram has three payloads—RAMBHA,
ChaSTE and ILSA (see graphics)—with which
it will study moonquakes, moon terrain and
its ionosphere. Before this, however, it will let
Pragyan out. This six-wheeled rover is capable of
travelling half a kilometre away from the lander,
very slowly (1cm/sec). It is equipped with a spec-
troscope and a spectrometer, with which it can
analyse the mineral composition of the terrain,
and perhaps sniff out more water deposits. Since
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