ISRO delays Chandrayaan-2 to July
An unnamed official at India’s space agency ISRO has revealed that they have decided to further delay its lunar lander/rover Chandrayaan-2 until July following the landing failure of SpaceIL’s Beresheet on the Moon.
“We saw Israel’s example and we don’t want to take any risk. Despite Israel being such a technologically advanced country, the mission failed. We want the mission to be a success,” he said.
The launch of India’s Moon mission was scheduled in April but it was postponed after Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft crashed during moon landing early this month. The ambitious mission was a first for a private effort.
“Landing on the Moon is a very complex mission and all the exigencies have to be factored in,” the official added.
No reason was given for the delay, other than a desire to be cautious. While caution is often a wise thing in experimental engineering, too much caution can be a fatal flaw. Chandrayaan-2 was originally scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2018. It has now been delayed repeatedly since then, with the only hint of a reason being an unconfirmed story suggesting it was damaged during ground tests.
If this damage is the reason, then ISRO should tell us. Otherwise, the agency is beginning to look like it is afraid to fly.
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An unnamed official at India’s space agency ISRO has revealed that they have decided to further delay its lunar lander/rover Chandrayaan-2 until July following the landing failure of SpaceIL’s Beresheet on the Moon.
“We saw Israel’s example and we don’t want to take any risk. Despite Israel being such a technologically advanced country, the mission failed. We want the mission to be a success,” he said.
The launch of India’s Moon mission was scheduled in April but it was postponed after Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft crashed during moon landing early this month. The ambitious mission was a first for a private effort.
“Landing on the Moon is a very complex mission and all the exigencies have to be factored in,” the official added.
No reason was given for the delay, other than a desire to be cautious. While caution is often a wise thing in experimental engineering, too much caution can be a fatal flaw. Chandrayaan-2 was originally scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2018. It has now been delayed repeatedly since then, with the only hint of a reason being an unconfirmed story suggesting it was damaged during ground tests.
If this damage is the reason, then ISRO should tell us. Otherwise, the agency is beginning to look like it is afraid to fly.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
“We saw Israel’s example and we don’t want to take any risk.”
“. . . the agency is beginning to look like it is afraid to fly.”
“A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.”
John A. Hopper
“A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.” — Grace Hopper Or maybe John A. Shedd.
Often, in aerospace, when a problem happens to someone else then caution goes around the industry. “What happened, and do we already protect against that on our systems?
A couple of decades ago, a southern California shake table over-shook a satellite (an anomaly) during testing, causing some damage to the satellite. An indirect cause was that the test crew had not tested the shake table with a dummy mass, after several months of non-use, before testing the satellite in order to verify the table was working properly. My boss, at the time, had me check with our own test crew that they verified our own shake tables when they were not used for more than three months. The answer was yes, as we had seen them do on several occasions, but the managers became cautious and needed reassurance that we were not vulnerable to the same problem to our satellites.
My speculation is that India may be attempting to verify that whatever happened with the Israeli IMU and its interaction with the engines and thrusters will not happen to their own lander. They may also be reviewing as many other instrumentation interactions as they can, too.