Chandrayaan-2
Chandrayaan-2 — India's second Moon mission, launched by ISRO on 22 July 2019: an orbiter, the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover. Vikram lost contact about 2 km above the surface during its descent on 6 September 2019 (UTC) and struck the Moon about 600 km from the south pole, with Pragyan still inside it. The orbiter carries on in a polar orbit about 100 km up, mapping the surface with a camera that resolves 0.3 m and studying water and the thin lunar atmosphere.
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- ISRO
- Launched
- July 22, 2019
- Status
- Active
Trajectory
- Speed rel. the Moon
- 1.65 km/s
- Computed from the cached state vector, relative to the Moon
- Distance from the Sun
- 1 AU
- Computed from the cached position
- Distance from Earth
- 0.345 AU
- Computed from cached positions
- Distance from Venus
- 0.378 AU
- Computed from cached positions
Mission
Chandrayaan-2 was launched by ISRO on the first GSLV Mk III (now LVM3) from Sriharikota on 22 July 2019 at 09:13 UTC: an orbiter, the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover inside it. After a month raising its Earth orbit it entered lunar orbit on 20 August, and Vikram separated from the orbiter on 2 September. Vikram began its descent toward a high plain about 70° south on 6 September (UTC). Its descent was normal to about 2.1 km above the surface, and then contact was lost. The Government of India later said it had made a hard landing within 500 m of the planned site. In November 2019 NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the site; a volunteer, Shanmuga Subramanian, spotted the first piece of debris in those images, and the orbiter's camera team then found the impact point, at 70.8810°S, 22.7840°E. Pragyan never left the lander. The orbiter reached its science orbit, about 100 km above both poles, in September 2019. Planned to work for a year, it had fuel for about seven. Its infrared spectrometer mapped hydroxyl and water at mid-northern latitudes, its camera resolves 0.3 m on the surface, and its radar found signs of possible ice beneath the floors of craters inside permanently shadowed craters. In October 2021 it moved to avoid a close approach to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It is still tracked in 2026. (Its position here is JPL Horizons', for the orbiter.)
- 2019Chandrayaan-2 launches toward the Moon on a GSLV Mk III rocketLaunch
The orbiter, with the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover.
- 2019Into lunar orbitArrival
At first 114 × 18,072 km.
- 2019Vikram separates from the orbiterMilestone
- 2019Vikram crashes during its descentMilestone
Contact is lost about 2.1 km above the surface.
- 2019Vikram's crash site foundMilestone
By NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team, helped by a volunteer, at 70.8810°S, 22.7840°E.
- 2021A move to avoid NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance OrbiterMilestone
Two days before a predicted pass about 3 km apart.
Images
Images from open archives · credit shown per image