On Monday, 22 July 2019, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) created history with the successful launch of India’s second mission to the moon. The first space mission of its kind, Chandrayaan-2 was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, in the southeast coast of India.
After a smooth countdown lasting twenty hours, at 02:43 pm, a 142-feet-tall, 640 tonne rocket – the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark III – launched into the sky to ‘go where no country has ever gone before – the Moon’s south polar region,’ more than 200,000 miles away. About 16 minutes 14 seconds after lift-off, the GSLV Mark III injected Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft into an elliptical earth orbit.
When Chandrayaan-2 lands successfully on the moon, India will become the fourth nation — after the United States, Russia and China — to land on the moon. If you missed watching the launch, you could watch the lift-off and on-board camera view of the GSLV Mark III here.
The launch, originally scheduled to take place on 15 July 2019, had been called off by ISRO citing a technical snag; one of the helium tanks in the upper stage of the rocket had been losing pressure. But the ISRO team worked on it and fixed the issue within twenty-four hours.
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