Chandrayaan-2 completes fifth and last earth-bound maneuver successfully

New Delhi, Aug 06: ISRO's ambitious Chandrayaan-2 performed its fifth and last earth-bound maneuver and moved another step closer to the Moon on Tuesday. After this maneuver, the next step is to sling the spacecraft in a precise manner so that it enters moon's orbit.

These step-by step maneuvers are aimed at steadily increasing the spacecraft's altitude until Earth's gravitational force becomes weaker and the moon's influence can begin to take over.

"Fifth earth bound orbit raising maneuver for #Chandrayaan2 spacecraft has been performed today (August 6, 2019) at 1504 hrs (IST) as planned," ISRO tweeted.

The fourth orbit raising maneuver was on August 2 during which the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft moved from 276 x 71792 km orbit around the earth to 277 x 89472 km.

The third orbit raising manoeuvre was performed on July 29 afternoon. The ambitious project of sending a spacecraft with a moonlander and a rover was launched on July 22 afternoon.

Last week, the mission successfully completed its second earthbound orbit-raising manoeuvre on July 26, 2019 at 0108 hrs (IST) as planned, using the onboard propulsion system for a firing duration of 883 seconds. If Chandrayaan-2 is successful, India will be the fourth country after the U.S., China, and the Soviet Union to complete a soft landing on the moon.

On July 22, the Chandrayaan 2 was injected into an elliptical orbit of 170x45,475 km by India's heavy-lift rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV Mk III) with a textbook precision.