ISRO puts Chandrayaan-2 into moon’s orbit

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully inserted Chandrayaan 2 into the lunar orbit today after completing a critical orbit maneuver at 9:02 am. The time taken for the maneuver was 1,738 seconds after which the spacecraft has been put into the 114km X 18,072km orbit. Now a series of orbit maneuvers will be performed to take the spacecraft to its final orbit, which will be around 100 km above the moon’s surface. Then the lander Vikram will be maneuvered to soft land on the Moon, expected to be completed on September 7.   Chandrayaan 2 will perform studies on the south pole of the lunar terrain, which has not been done by any previous mission. The entire mission has cost Rs 1,000 crore, less than the budget for the Hollywood blockbuster Avengers: End Game.