NASA on ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 mission

India’s second moon mission Chandrayaan-2 was launched on Monday by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota in Andhra’s Nellore district at 2.43 pm. It was launched atop a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) MkIII, India’s most powerful rocket and will carry an orbiter, a Lander Vikram, and a Rover Pragyan, which would revolve around the moon for 12 days.

While congratulations poured in from across the world on the successful launch, USA’s independent space agency NASA took to Twitter to applaud the work of ISRO as well. “Congrats to ISRO on the launch of Chandrayaan 2, a mission to study the Moon. We’re proud to support your mission comms using our Deep Space Network and look forward to what you learn about the lunar South pole where we will send astronauts on our #Artemis mission in a few years,” NASA’s post read.

The mission aims to explore the Lunar south pole, a part of the moon that has not been mapped by any county so far, by landing a rover, imaging the surface and studying the atmosphere for over a year. Chandrayaan 2 was scheduled to be launched on July 15, but the lift-off was aborted 56 minutes and 24 seconds before the launch due to a technical snag.

The success of the Chandrayaan 2 mission makes India the fourth country, followed by the US, Russia, and China to pull off a soft landing on the moon. It has been reported that the budget of ISRO is less than 20 times that of NASA.