ISRO chairman K said Chandrayaan-2 will be launched on July 15 at 2.51 am. Photo: ISRO

ISRO: Chandrayaan-2 to take off on July 15

The Federal
12 Jun 2019 3:01 PM IST (Updated:2019-06-12 10:30:10)

The ambitious second moon mission Chandrayaan-2 is all set to be launched on July 15. This was declared by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K Shivan on Wednesday (June 12).

He said that Chandrayaan-2 will be launched on July 15 at 2.51 am. The total mass of the mission is 3.8 tonnes, he added. Earlier, ISRO indicated that Chandrayaan-2 might be launched from July 9 to July 16 with the Moon landing expected to take place on 6 September.

Chandrayaan 2 has three modules: the Orbiter, Lander (Vikram) and the Rover (Pragyan). The Rover will be housed inside the lander, according to ISRO. There will be eight instruments on the orbiter. However, there are no specific details of the instruments that it will be carrying along. The sixth Imaging Infra-Red Spectrometer (IIRS) of NASA, the only foreign payload, will be a part of the Orbiter.

Chandrayaan-2’s nominal mission life of the lander is expected to be 14 earth days or one lunar day. The lander will also measure moon quakes.