Chandrayaan-2 launch on July 15 at 2.51 am: ISRO

New Delhi, June 12: India's ambitious moon mission Chandrayaan 2 will be launched on July 15 at 2 hours 51 minutes.

The landing on the moon near the South Pole, an uncharted territory so far, would be on September 6 or 7, Sivan told reporters here, as the Indian space agency is all set to embark on its most complex mission.

The launch would take place at 2.51 am on board the GSLV MK-III vehicle from the spaceport of Sriharikota.The mission cost about Rs 800 crore, will involve unloading of a rover to study the Moon.

Chandrayaan-2, has three modules namely Orbiter, Lander (Vikram) and Rover (Pragyan). The lander named Vikram (meaning valour, after the father of the Indian space programme, Vikram Sarabhai). It will release a small robotic rover, named Pragyan (wisdom), to move around, feel and understand the lunar surface.

There will eight instruments on the orbiter however, there are no specific details of the instruments that it will be carrying along. The sixth Imaging Infra-Red Spectrometer (IIRS) of NASA, the only foreign payload, will be a part of the Orbiter.

The total mass of the mission is 3.8 tonnes, said ISRO.

The Orbiter and Lander modules would be interfaced mechanically and stacked together as an integrated module and accommodated inside the GSLV MK-III launch vehicle. Rover is housed inside Lander.

After the launch into an earth-bound orbit by GSLV MK-III, the integrated module would reach the moon orbit using the orbiter propulsion module and subsequently, Lander would separate from Orbiter and soft land at the predetermined site, close to lunar South Pole, the ISRO said.

Rover would roll out for carrying out scientific experiments on the lunar surface, it said, noting that instruments were also mounted on Lander and Orbiter for carrying out scientific experiments.

ISRO had earlier indicated that it was looking at a 9-16 July launch window with the Moon landing expected to take place on 6 September. Chandrayaan-2 is an advanced version of the previous Chandrayaan-1 mission, which was launched about 10 years ago