The Indian lunar rover Chandrayan-2 crashed while landing

The desire to conquer space is meritorious regardingany country. Only taking big steps forward, humanity will be able to conquer this bottomless element and, breaking through thorns, get into new worlds. Many of them have every chance of becoming our new home. So far, however, we are only taking the first steps in this direction. India decided to join the pioneers and tried to land its Chandrayan-2 apparatus on the moon. What came of this, we will tell in this article.

"Chandrayan-2" was supposed to gently sit on the surface of the moon

Content

• 1 Loss of communication with the apparatus “Chandrayan-2”
• 2 Purpose of the mission “Chandrayan-2”
• 3 History of missions to the moon
• 4 Is there life in space?

Loss of communication with the device “Chandrayan-2”

Indian mission to the moon has been launched in recentJuly 2019. “Chandrayan-2” is India’s first attempt to send its device to the moon. The mission is based on three devices: the Vikram landing platform, the Pragayan lunar rover and the orbiter, which separated from the landing platform on September 2. He remained in orbit with parameters of 125 by 96 kilometers.

Flights to the moon have always been something special

It took 15 minutes to land. It was responsible for 8 engines for orientation and 5 marching engines. As usual, the landing took place in several stages, but at some point the connection with the device was lost. This happened at an altitude of about one kilometer when moving at a speed of about 60 m / s. The problems began at an altitude of 2.1 kilometers, when the device began to deviate from the landing path.

Suddenly: the moon was much older than previously thought

Just before the loss of connectionAmateur astronomers who tracked the landing of the device and its telemetry noted a sharp change in the signal. It is difficult to say what this may be connected with, but the data are fixed and now they have to be sorted out.

Broadcast Mission Mission:

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The purpose of the mission “Chandrayan-2”

The equipment that was part of the mission waspart of a science program. It included tools for recording the seismic activity of the lunar surface and lunar soil. In particular, it was planned to study the thermal conductivity of the lunar soil and its other thermal properties. A complete list of equipment that may have been lost can be viewed on the ISRO website.

Equipment of the mission ”Chandrayan-2”

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Mission apparatuses were designed to work infor about 14 Earth days (one lunar day). After this time, the devices would be in the shade, which should have led to a critical decrease in temperature to about minus 180 degrees Celsius.

History of missions to the moon

If the landing was successful, India would become the fourth country that could make a soft landing on the surface of our satellite.

This is what the Soviet Luna-9 station looked like

The USSR became the first on this list in February 1966of the year. The station that was able to land was Luna-9. She also had problems, but due to luck and the correct work of specialists, she managed to make sure that they did not interfere with achieving the desired result. It is worth adding that before a successful landing, more than a dozen failed. Some stations were not even launched into outer space. Due to the low reliability of the carriers of that time, they remained in low Earth orbit.

Good question: Why didn’t the cosmonauts of the USSR fly to the moon?

3.5 months after the landing of “Luna-9”, onthe satellite’s surface was the station “Surveyor-1”, sent by the United States. The third member of this elite club was China, which achieved its goal only half a century later. Landing occurred at the end of 2013 as part of the Chanye-3 mission.

Every chance of fourth place in the landing race atIsrael had the moon, but in April of this year the mission ended in failure. The point in it was set by the crash of the Bereshit probe. Although, he still left his mark in history. Perhaps this will even help in future discoveries.

Is there life in space?

We already wrote that on board the device was a container with slow-moving, which can withstand very serious tests, up to a supernova explosion and travel through outer space.

Tardigrades - nasty creature with fantastic capabilities

Scientists are sure that a container with tardigrades is nothad to suffer on impact. Even if it was destroyed, the insects were still in the resin, which was supposed to protect them. Theoretically, during subsequent missions, it would be possible to find a container and return tardigrades to Earth to study their survivability. After all, the chances that they survived in space are very high, and the study of this fact will make many important discoveries.