Bengaluru: After almost 30 days of space travel, India's moonshot Chandrayaan 2 has been effectively steered into lunar orbit today. This was one of the mission's most tricky activities. A higher than expected velocity of approach would have bounced off the spacecraft into deep space, while a slow strategy would have led to the gravity of the moon pulling Chandrayaan 2 and crashing it on the lunar surface. The approach speed had to be pretty accurate and the altitude above the moon pretty accurate. The task would have killed even a tiny mistake.
"Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) of #Chandrayaan2 maneuver was completed successfully today (August 20, 2019). The duration of maneuver was 1738 seconds beginning from 0902 hrs IST" tweeted by ISRO.
