Chandrayaan-2 begins 48-day journey to the Moon amid anxiety and euphoria
The mood was euphoric on Monday at the mission control room of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro’s) Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota. At 2.43 pm the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mk III (GSLV-Mk III), carrying the 3.8-tonne Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, lifted off from its launchpad. GSLV-Mk III cost Rs 375 crore and Chandrayaan-2 Rs 603 crore. After a technical snag aborting the takeoff on July 15, the space agency succeeded in putting the satellite on the desired orbit, or a better orbit, as the first step of its 48-day journey to the moon’s unexplored south pole, about 384,000 km away. President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Isro and its scientists on this feat. Before the launch, however, it was a tense situation at the mission control room with former Isro chiefs A S Kiran Kumar and K Radhakrishnan, among others, watching the proceedings from the gallery. There was no lighthearted conversation as t