What Happened to Chandrayaan 2
In this article I will tell you what was the plan ? Image of Chandrayaan 2 , what were its components along with purpose, what actually happened to Chandrayaan 2 and what we learnt.
What was the Plan ?
Actually, Chandrayaan 2 mission didn’t happened the way it was planned. We were not able to execute it properly due to few problems. I will not say that Chandrayaan 2 mission is otally failed because we were able to accomplish various things. The plan was that we will send Chandrayaan 2 from Earth to probe moon. And when it will reach near moon, one of its components that is orbiter will start orbiting the moon. And its other components i.e, lander and rover will land over the difficult surface of moon. But the lander component didn’t deployed over moon’s surface as per plan. But the orbital worked as per plan and still working.
Chandrayaan 2 and its components :
Chandrayaan 2
Orbiter
- Weight : 2379 kg
- Dimensions : 3.2 * 5.8 * 2.1 m
- Power : 1,000 W
- Payloads : 8
- Mission Lifetime : 1 year in Lunar orbit
Vikram Lander
- Weight : 1471 kg
- Dimensions : 2.54 * 2 * 1.2 m
- Power : 650 W
- Payloads : 3 (1 passive experiment)
- Mission Lifetime : 1 Lunar Day
Pragyan Rover
- Weight : 27 kg
- Dimensions : 0.9 * 0.75 * 0.85 m
- Power : 50 W
- Payloads : 2
- Mission Lifetime : 1 Lunar day
What happened to Chandrayaan 2 ?
When Chandrayaan 2 as a whole reached near moon, it started orbiting the moon. At that moment, all its main components i.e, orbiter and Vikram lander as I already shown were combined.
When Chandrayaan 2 reached more closer to moon, orbiter and vikram lander separated. And Vikram lander was to be landed over moon’s surface. After that, Pragyan rover to be taken out from Vikram lander which was going to study moon.
Actually the main equipments which were to perform scientific experiments and study moon were in orbiter. And hopefully, orbiter is working 100% fine, no any problem. Its weight was 2370 kg and had 8 payloads. (In simple words you can understand payload as equipment for scientific experiments.)
And Vikram Lander had 3 payloads and Pragyan Rover had 2 payloads for advanced research.
But the problem occurred with Vikram Lander. It didn’t landed properly over moon’s surface.
Why Vikram Lander failed ?
Now you might be thinking why Vikram Lander failed ? Why Vikram failed to land properly over surface of moon and what was planned for its landing ?
So in order to know about it better you will have to understand its concept. So the basic idea was that we will send signal from headquarters of ISRO in Bengaluru to the orbiter and after that Vikram Lander will be separated from it and slowly land over the surface of moon.
Though gravity of moon is less than Earth but if we assume that from height of 200 km if we drop (free-fall) an equipment of 1300-1400 kg, so its obvious that it will crash. There’s no any doubt about it.
So in order to avoid crash and manage soft landing, we had installed 5 800N liquid thrust engines as shown below.
But it was not an easy task to operate it. Because if you think it to be started once that is after the separation. So the answer is “No” because it was to be activated and deactivated many times. During the whole mission to provide safe landing. It was very difficult and complicated task. And ISRO had almost done it. But unfortunately when Vikram Lander was just 2.1 km away from moon’s surface. Connection between orbiter and Vikram Lander broke out. And the signal sent from ISRO to Vikram Lander through orbiter disrupted. After that we don’t know what actually happened.
What happened to Chandrayaan 2 ?
According to news, it crashed out but recently ISRO found its location. It is now 500 meter away from expected location. Because its antenna which was responsible for establishing connection is not working. But there’s still chances of its reconnection. And once we do it, Vikram Lander will be able to stand again on its own as it is lased with such technology. All it need is just a single command and that’s possible if we establish connection with it. And once we connect with Vikram Lander, we will be able to take out Pragyan Rover and our mission will be successful. There’s still hope of it…
What we should look at ?
Now If we see practically, Chandrayaan 2 is not a failure. In my opinion, it was a successful mission as orbiter is still working properly.
In today’s world, India is under the list of countries having orbiters over mars and moon, where even China is not listed. Its an important accomplishment in itself.
And if we talk about landing over moon, till now there are 38 soft landing attempts made on moon. But only about half have succeeded. So if our Vikram Lander was unable to land properly, its not disheartening. Instead we should appreciate the fact that Chandrayaan 2 covered distance of near about 3 lakh 80 thousand kilometers. It completed a complicated journey and finally reached moon.
Conclusion
Most importantly, we are not going to stop here, you might have heard the following sentence many times that is,
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
You can take example of NASA, that how Apollo I failed completely and so many astronauts died. But they didn’t gave up, after that many Apollo missions held and finally they saw success by Neil Armstrong’s mission.
If we talk of space, failure is not a new thing or a big deal. Actually nothing is failure, all these are experiments. And we all learn from these experiments.
After Chandrayaan 2, Chandrayaan 3, Chandrayaan 4…and many other missions such as Gaganyaan, Aditya L1, etc will take place in future.
So this was the final analysis of the mission. I was also interested in this mission like you that is Chandrayaan 2 mission. Though the results are not as expected but still there’s hope that we establish a connection again with Vikram Lander. Its the time to stand with ISRO. ISRO has given us many proud moments.
#STAND WITH ISRO
#SUPPORT ISRO
And I hope we will see many successful missions in future. If you liked this article, share it with your friends.
Thank you !!!
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