Chandrayaan 2 Will Endure '15 Minutes Of Terror' Later Tonight, Before Making All Of Us Proud

Chandrayaan 2 had started its journey towards the moon almost a month and a half back with the Vikram (lander) and Pragyan (rover), and now it's really close to finally reaching its destination. Less than 24 hours to go until touchdown, as we write this.

While ISRO's Chandrayaan 2 has had smooth-sailing and rather uneventful journey so far, with everything going as per plan with no glitches, things are going to get more challenging as the Vikram Lander gets ready to descend onto the moon's surface.

ISRO

As they say, flying is hard, landing is harder, and that's also the case with Chandrayaan 2, where the landing the payload on the lunar surface is tricky and critical and the most crucial part of the whole ordeal.

Just to put things into perspective, out of a total of 109 missions to the moon so far, 41 have been unsuccessful. The most recent one was the Israeli Beresheet lander. ISRO Chairman K Sivan has also described the last moments of Chandrayaan 2's journey as "the most terrifying 15 minutes" which is just 35 km in vertical distance from the orbit.

Vikram and Pragyaan are already detached from the orbiter and are orbiting at around 6,120 kilometres per hour. Tonight they'll proceed with their decent on the lunar surface, and this is what will happen in the '15 minutes of terror'.

ISRO

7.4 km from the Moon's surface

Tonight, Vikram will arrive at an altitude of 7.4km above the lunar surface at a speed of 526kmph. If you were wondering how fast will this be, a commercial jet flies at this speed.

5 km from the Moon's surface

However, this speed isn't constant and in the next 38 seconds the speed of the lander will be brought down to 331.2kmph at a distance of 5km from the lunar surface.

400m from the Moon's surface

Coming at around 400 metres from the lunar surface, Vikram will briefly pause and hover over the moon for around 12 seconds to collect data about the surface which will include images too.

100m from the Moon's surface

In around a minute it'll be 100 metres above the surface of the moon. Here too it'll take a pause for 25 seconds in order to see if the landing spot is perfect or if it requires to pick another landing spot instead.

ISRO

10m Above the Moon

After arriving at a distance of 10 metres over the lunar surface, we'll be 13 seconds away from the touchdown. And things will get more intense as Vikram will fire all its engines to create force in the opposite direction, helping it to slow down in speed considerably and softly land on the lunar surface.

It's definitely going to be an exciting moment, when the Vikram Lander finally touches down on a wholly unexplored part of the moon. If you're looking forward to track the Chandrayaan 2 descent onto the lunar surface, it's expected to start around 1:30 am late tonight or early Saturday morning. Stay tuned.