India’s Chandrayaan 2 has successfully entered a lunar orbit

The orbital insertion involved an engine burn that started yesterday at 11:32 p.m. EDT and ended at approximately 12 a.m. EDT, Space.com noted. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials said the operation went well and the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft is expected to place its lander on the moon’s surface in early September, CNN reported.

India’s Chandrayaan-2 Spacecraft Enters Lunar Orbit

Chandrayaan 2 has a rover named Pragyan, lander named Vikram and an orbiter that will be in a lunar polar orbit. The rover is pretty basic and the objective of the mission is to show they can land on the moon and operate a lunar rover.

Scientific goals include studies of lunar topography, mineralogy, elemental abundance, the lunar exosphere, and signatures of hydroxyl and water ice.[52] The orbiter will map the lunar surface and help to prepare 3D maps of it. The onboard radar will also map the surface while studying the water ice in the south polar region and thickness of the lunar regolith on the surface.[53]

Wikipedia

Chandrayaan 2 will be aided in achieving its mission by some of India's most advanced engineering marvels. Its integrated module, which comprises technology and software developed across the country, includes ISRO's most powerful launch vehicle to date and a wholly indigenous rover. Some of the advancements on the spacecraft include:

Lander capable of 'Soft Landing' on the lunar surface

Algorithm wholly developed by India's scientific community

Rover capable of conducting in-situ payload experiments

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)

Here's to India taking a position in the current space race with a hopefully successful, soft landing on the moon.

Good. I'm ashamed of my rover privilege as an American.

originally posted by: LookingAtMars

The orbital insertion involved an engine burn that started yesterday at 11:32 p.m. EDT and ended at approximately 12 a.m. EDT, Space.com noted. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials said the operation went well and the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft is expected to place its lander on the moon’s surface in early September, CNN reported.

India’s Chandrayaan-2 Spacecraft Enters Lunar Orbit

Chandrayaan 2 has a rover named Pragyan, lander named Vikram and an orbiter that will be in a lunar polar orbit. The rover is pretty basic and the objective of the mission is to show they can land on the moon and operate a lunar rover.

Scientific goals include studies of lunar topography, mineralogy, elemental abundance, the lunar exosphere, and signatures of hydroxyl and water ice.[52] The orbiter will map the lunar surface and help to prepare 3D maps of it. The onboard radar will also map the surface while studying the water ice in the south polar region and thickness of the lunar regolith on the surface.[53]

Wikipedia

Chandrayaan 2 will be aided in achieving its mission by some of India's most advanced engineering marvels. Its integrated module, which comprises technology and software developed across the country, includes ISRO's most powerful launch vehicle to date and a wholly indigenous rover. Some of the advancements on the spacecraft include:

Lander capable of 'Soft Landing' on the lunar surface

Algorithm wholly developed by India's scientific community

Rover capable of conducting in-situ payload experiments

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)

Here's to India taking a position in the current space race with a hopefully successful, soft landing on the moon.

This could be a really important lunar mission, if it's successful. First of all, it's a pretty good sized lander, and will deploy a 60 pound (27 kg) rover. More importantly, it will be the first attempt to soft land anything (robotic or manned) at or near the lunar South Pole.

a reply to: 1947boomer

I think they are hoping to find water near the South Pole and map it out.

The rover is a little limited in that it can only communicate with the lander.

originally posted by: LookingAtMars
a reply to: 1947boomer

I think they are hoping to find water near the South Pole and map it out.

The rover is a little limited in that it can only communicate with the lander.

That's fairly standard though - China's rovers routed their data through their host lander

I'm more interested in the orbital camera; their first probe's image quality was superb.

50 years ago we where playing golf on the moon... Now we struckle to send a robot there.

originally posted by: Spacespider
50 years ago we where playing golf on the moon... Now we struckle to send a robot there.

And , since ?
Mars Rovers
High resolution images of every planet in the Solar System (and , I still count Pluto) on fly-bys
Why go back to the moon ?
Been there , done that.

I work with a lot on engineers from India and as smart as they are the techs are the ones that made this work. Many Indian Engineers feel physical work is below them and couldn't do it if they had to. We catch them cheating on testing because they KNOW it will work and what the answer will be. They generally run our simulation lab and have been known to tell us we did the baseline physical test is wrong because it didn't match their simulation. No your simulation should match our numbers. It scares me that someday they want to limit physical testing and only do simulations. We're not there yet.

a reply to: Spacespider

"We"?

originally posted by: OneBigMonkeyToo
a reply to: Spacespider

"We"?

"Mankind."

originally posted by: Spacespider
50 years ago we where playing golf on the moon... Now we struckle to send a robot there.

What we are now stuggling to do is not simply to go back to the Moon. We can do that. What we are now trying to do under the Artemis Program is go back to the moon and remain there for extended periods. That's a lot harder to do, and will take a whole new set of hardware we never used before.

Such as NASA's Lunar Gateway, which is an orbital platform (a mini-space-station) that is under design right now. The plan is that the Lunar gateway would act as a base station for human explorers to go back and forth from the surface, and the gateway would be able to provide support for those long-stay explorers.

Also, a much larger lunar lander will be required for longer-duration stays. NASA is also partnering with private companies to provide robotic craft to deliver science and technology payloads to and near the Moon for support of the Artemis Program.

The scope of NASA's new Artemis program is much more grand than the Apollo Program, so of course it would be more difficult and rely on larger and more complex hardware that has never been developed before.

Lunar Gateway

Moon To Mars

Private Commercial Lunar Payload Services

originally posted by: OneBigMonkeyToo
a reply to: Spacespider

"We"?

Humans

a reply to: Spacespider

OK, fair enough. Usually this point is being made to highlight the spurious claim that because we haven't been to the moon in some time, then this taken to mean that we have never been.

If that was not your meaning then fine, but the fact is that we as a species do know how to get there both with manned vehicles and unmanned probes. India's current mission is proof of that. The only difficulty is money. Politicians are in charge of that, not rocket scientists and engineers.

India's last mission to the moon was very successful, I'm looking forward to this one being the same, hopefully they'll take more photos of the Apollo sites that will prove what we as humans are capable of if we back our ambition with money.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

So when can we expect the first 7-11 store on the moon …??

Images of Lunar Surface captured by Terrain Mapping Camera -2 (TMC-2) of Chandrayaan 2

Jackson is an impact crater located in the northern hemisphere of the far side of the Moon. It is a 71 km dia crater at 22.4°N and 163.1°W (shown in the inset). The interesting feature at the western outer rim of Mach crater is another impact crater, Mitra (92 km dia). It is named after Prof. Sisir Kumar Mitra, who was an Indian physicist and Padma Bhushan recipient known for his pioneering work in the field of ionosphere and Radiophysics. The Korolev crater seen in the image is a 437 km crater which has several small craters of varying sizes.

The landing attempt is a little over a week away on September 7. Maybe the orbiter will try to capture an image of the landing.