Chandrayaan-2 Completes a year in lunar orbit; ISRO says adequate fuel for 7 years

Bengaluru: Indian Space agency ISRO proudly said that the Chandrayaan-2, India’s second lunar mission successfully completed one year around the moon on Thursday and there is sufficient onboard fuel to remain it operational for 7 years more.

It has been one year since the moon spacecraft inserted into lunar orbit as a follow up mission of India’s first lunar mission Chandrayaan 1 of 2008,  which gave clear evidence of water presence.

“Though the soft-landing attempt (of the lander carrying the rover) was not successful, the orbiter, which was equipped with eight scientific instruments, was successfully placed in the lunar orbit. The orbiter completed more than 4,400 orbits around the Moon and all the instruments are currently performing well,” ISRO said.

In the statement made by ISRO added that  the Chandrayaan-2 was in healthy condition and the performance of subsystems is normal.

According to ISRO the orbiter is being maintained in 100 +/- 25 km polar orbit with periodic orbit maintenance (OM) maneuvers. So far, 17 OMs are carried out since achieving 100 km lunar orbit on 24th September 2019. 

However,  Chandrayaan-2 was India’ first attempt for making soft landing of a rover on the unchartered south pole of lunar surface. That gone awry and Vikram lander had hard landing on September of last year.

Chandrayaan-2 was launched in July 22, 2019 to expand the knowledge about the moon through a detailed study of its topography, mineralogy, surface chemical composition, thermo-physical characteristics and atmosphere, leading to a better understanding of the origin and evolution of the moon.