India's Chandrayaan-2 launch postponed to end of 2018
April 18, 2018  20:22
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The launch of India's second mission to the moon Chandrayaan-2, which was scheduled for this month, has been postponed to later this year, ISRO chief K Sivan today informed the government.

A national level committee to review Chandrayaan-2 recommended some additional tests before the mission could take off, Indian Space Research Organisation sources said.

This has been done to exercise caution as Chandrayaan-2 will be ISRO's first inter-planetary mission to land a rover on any celestial body, they said.

During a meeting, Sivan briefed Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State in the Prime Ministers Office (that looks after the Department of Space), on the upcoming Chandrayaan-2 mission, expected to be launched from Sriharikota around October-November this year, an official statement said.

In a setback to ISRO last month, the GSAT-6A, the country's newest communication satellite, went incommunicado in space.

An ambitious mission, Chandrayaan-2 will be equipped with a land-rover and probe, which will descend on the surface of the moon, from where they will collect samples of soil, water, etc. to carry back home for detailed analysis and research.

This will be the first-of-its-kind moon mission.
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