ISRO aims to launch its first unmanned mission in December, under the Gaganyaan project. The launch was scheduled for December last year.
Chandrayaan-2 mission was India's first attempt to land on lunar surface. The ISRO had planned the landing on the South Pole of the lunar surface. However, the lander Vikram hard-landed.
The lander Vikram was to land on the moon's surface on September 7. It was 2.1 km above the moon's surface when it lost contact with the ground station at ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru.
The Vikram Lander successfully separated from Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter on September 2. The Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter continues to orbit the Moon in its existing orbit.
The Vikram lander was planned to land on the far side of the moon between 1:30 am to 2:30 am on the intervening night of Friday-Saturday. This would have been followed by rover (Pragyan) roll-out between 5:30 am to 6:30 am.
The ISRO has announced that they had lost communication with Chandrayaan-2's lander, Vikram, minutes before its soft landing on the surface of the moon.
PM Modi, who was in the ISRO headquarters to witness the historic moment, asked the scientists to not lose hope and be courageous.
The then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Cabinet approved the Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission. The subsequent years went into mission planning and execution with home-grown technology used for the expedition.
The Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft will be the first Indian expedition to carry out a soft landing on the lunar surface. This mission will make India the fourth country after the US, Russia, and China to conduct a soft landing on the moon.
India's second mission to the moon was approved by the cabinet in September 2008, just before the launch of Chandrayaan 1.If the mission is successful, it will be yet another feather in the cap for ISRO whose reputation in this field has grown exponentially.
