india

Updated: Aug 07, 2019 07:21 IST

Chandrayaan 2 is in its final leg of the journey to the moon with scientists from Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) raising the orbit of the spacecraft for the fifth and final time within the Earth’s orbit.

The propulsion system onboard the spacecraft was fired at 03:04 pm on Tuesday for 1041 seconds to reach the orbit 276 x 1,42,975 km. “All spacecraft parameters are normal,” said ISRO.

On August 14, as the spacecraft approaches the highest point on the orbit around the Earth, another manoeuvre will be done to help it escape the Earth’s gravitational influence and enter a trans-lunar path for onward journey to the moon.

India’s second mission to moon will take 48 days from the launch to land on the South Pole of the moon. Apollo 11—the first mission to take a man to the moon—took about four days. This is because the Indian mission is using the Earth’s gravity as the orbit was being raised slowly to gain velocity and be slung towards the moon.

The spacecraft will be in this trans-lunar trajectory for seven days before being inserted into an orbit around the moon on August 20.

Four ‘burns’ or firing of the on-board propulsion system will be done during the 13 days in the lunar orbit to bring the space craft to a 100x100 km circular orbit before the lander-rover separates on Day 43 after the launch.

During this, an optical high resolution camera will take photographs to look for a suitable landing site near the lunar South Pole. The images taken will be transmitted to Earth and processed after which the landing site map will be uploaded to the lander-rover before its powered decent and landing on the moon on September 7 at 02:58 am.