The lander and rover meant for India’s second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 reached the ISRO’s launch pad at Sriharikota last night.
The rover called Pragyan is installed within the lander known as Vikram. They were flagged off from ISRO laboratory in Bengaluru on Monday.
Earlier, the orbiter that will house the lander and the rover reached the launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota on Saturday.
Chandrayaan-2 will be launched aboard India’s most powerful booster GSLV-Mark-3 tentatively early in the morning on July 15th with the aim of making the lander to soft-land on the South Pole of the moon by September 6th. India would be the fourth country to have its probe soft-land on the moon.
“As the orbiter, lander and the rover of Chandrayaan-2 are all in the launch pad in Sriharikota, the scientists of the national space agency are now assembling them together. Later, Chandrayaan-2 will be integrated with the rocket GSLV Mark-Three for its launch as per schedule.
The rover, the lander and the orbiter, all have payloads meant for collecting data on the nature of the moon surface. Once the orbiter reaches the lunar orbit of 100-kilometre distance from the moon, the lander will emerge from it and make a slow descend on the lunar south pole.
Once it soft-lands, the rover will leave the lander and move around the moon’s surface, collect samples and analyse them. The lunar south pole remains an unexplored area so far and Chandrayaan-2 is expected to unravel some of the mysteries of the earth’s only natural satellite.
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