After technical snag, ISRO bounced back with flying colours: Space chief on Chandrayaan-2

After Chandrayaan 2 was successfully injected into the orbit, ISRO chief K Sivan on Monday announced that the Indian space agency had bounced back with "flying colours" after a snag stalled the mission on July 15.

"I'm extremely happy to announce that the GSLVMkIII-M1 successfully injected Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft into Earth Orbit. It is the beginning of a historic journey of India towards the moon and to land at a place near the South Pole to carry out scientific experiments and explore the unexplored," he said.

"After that technical snag we had, we fixed it and now ISRO has bounced back with flying colours.," he added, congratulating the entire team on their feat.

India's indigenous moon mission was launched at 2.43 pm on Monday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here, exactly a week after the mission was aborted after a technical fault was detected less than an hour before the launch.

"Immediately after the technical snag was observed, the entire ISRO team swung into action. In fact, the work done in the next day 24 hours was mind-boggling. Quickly the...root cause of the snag was identified and corrected within 24 hours. In the next one and a half days, the required tests were conducted to ensure that the corrections made were in the right direction. After confirmation, the vehicle was handed over to the management for action," Sivan said on Monday.

"The mammoth task was possible only due to the hard work of team ISRO," he stated.

In the run-up to the launch, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), on its Twitter, gave regular updates about preparations.

Sivan had previously said the Chandrayaan-2 will perform 15 crucial manoeuvres in the days to come. He added that all the preparatory work regarding the launch has been completed, and technical glitches that developed in the first attempt have been rectified.

The ISRO chief said that the spacecraft will be landing on the moon very slowly. "It will land on the South Pole. There is a lot of scientific testing to be done regarding the mission. Scientists around the world are looking forward to the launch," Sivan had said.

ISRO had successfully completed the launch rehearsal of the Chandrayaan-2 mission on Saturday.

Chandrayaan-2 will explore a region of Moon where no mission has ever set foot. The spacecraft consists of an orbiter, a lander, and a rover together referred to as "composite body". The probe's total mass is 3.8 ton and is expected to land on the Moon's south polar region on September 6 or 7 this year.

It will be the first Indian expedition to attempt a soft landing on the lunar surface. This mission will make India the fourth country after the US, Russia, and China to carry out a soft landing on Moon.