India will create history by becoming the first nation to reach closest to the Moon’s the South Pole with an attempt to make a soft landing. The Chandrayaan 2 Moon mission is scheduled to land on the lunar surface after midnight today and to witness the historic moment National Geography will take its viewers on a once in a lifetime expedition while telecasting live.
The south polar region of the lunar surface is a region that has never been explored before, and this holds high potential to reveal new science as it is believed to hold a lot of water trapped as ice in deep craters. The Vikram Lander is scheduled to begin its Moon landing at around 1.30 am at the speed of 6 km per second and will eventually reduce its speed to 2 meters per second to make a soft and safe landing.
After Vikram lands, a six-wheeled robotic vehicle called Pragyan will come out of the lander and crawl the surface of the Moon to collect data, which will be relayed back to ISRO.
Originally Chandrayaan 2 was scheduled to be launched way back in 2011 itself, immediately after Chandrayaan 1 with a joint collaborative mission between India and Russia. However, the mission was postponed in January 2013 and rescheduled to 2016 because Russia was unable to develop the lander on time. After several postpones, the launch finally happened on 22 July 2019.
With a successful Moon landing India will be the fourth nation to perform soft-landing on the lunar surface and the first nation to touch down the South Pole region of the Moon. As time is ticking, let’s wait until India creates another history.
