India: ISRO’s second Moon mission Chandrayaan-2 that was to be launched on Thursday got delayed again.
“The next launch date of Chandrayaan-2 has not been confirmed yet,” a spokesman of the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told IANS.
This is the second time the space agency deferred the mission launch.
Though ISRO Chairman K. Sivan told the media earlier that they planned to launch Chandrayaan-2 on January 3, reason for the delay has not been made public yet.
“The window to launch the Moon mission for landing on its surface is, however, open till March,” Sivan told reporters earlier.
The Rs 800-crore Chandrayaan-2 mission comes a decade after the maiden mission Chandrayaan-1 was launched on October 22, 2008 from the country’s only spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, 90 km northeast of Chennai.
The 3,890-kg Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, to be launched onboard the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mk-3, will orbit around the Moon to study its conditions and collect data of its topography, mineralogy and exosphere.
While Chandrayaan-1 reached the lunar orbit on November 8, 2008, its impact probe crashed onto the Moon on November 14, 2008. The 675-kg spacecraft was lost on August 29, 2009 after orbiting at 100 km away from its surface and mapping its chemical, mineralogical and photo-geologic properties for over nine months.
