Why Chandrayan 2 mission failed?

Update: 2023-07-14 17:13 IST

Chandrayaan 2's lander Vikram videos Animation by ISRO (Youtube Screen grab / ISRO)

Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on to the Chandrayaan-2 mission, which ended in tears after the Vikram lander crashed into the lunar surface in 2019. Incidentally an Israeli built spacecraft with similar objective also failed the same year. Another Japanese mission led by Hakuto-R also did not succeed as it crashed into the lunar surface.

This raises the question as to why soft landing is so difficult on Moon. According to scientists reaching moon itself is a herculean task as it is over 383,400 kms from Earth. Earth's lone satellite has an extremely thin atmosphere. This means that spacecraft cannot rely on atmospheric drag to slow them down to a reasonable speed before landing.

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The space ships need to use their propulsion systems for the descent, it means that they will need more fuel and more advanced landing computation systems. The journey of the The journey of the last few kilometres above the lunar surface is essential. The scientists monitoring the space ship need to ensure that the computers make extremely quick calculations and manoevures to ensure that the landing becomes successful. Pre-selected safe landing area is very tough job as there is no GPS system available on moon.

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