Chandrayaan mission aborted hour before launch after ISRO detects snag

In a massive disappointment, the launch of Chandrayaan-2, India's second probe to the moon, was called off 56 minutes and 24 seconds before lift-off early on Monday.

According to the Indian Space Research Organisation, a technical snag was detected in the launch vehicle system one hour before launch. As a measure of abundant precaution, the launch has been called off. A revised launch date will be announced later.

THE WEEK team was sitting on the roof of the media centre at Sriharikota, one of the best points to witness the launch from, when at 1.51am came an announcement over the public announcement system, saying "hold the launch."

Soon after, came the announcement that the launch has been cancelled for Monday. It also said “we have lost this launch window”. Fresh dates will be announced later.

After the massive build-up, the cancellation was a huge anticlimax. President Ram Nath Kovind was in the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, as were around 5,000 visitors who had registered for the launch.

The launch vehicle system is the GSLV Mk-III, ISRO's heaviest launch vehicle, also known as Bahubali.

Though ISRO had been having trouble for years with its GSLV, of late, the vehicle had proved its mettle and had successful flights. The Mk-III version itself had had three flights, of which one was an experimental launch.

While in space systems, there are many things that can go wrong, it was rather unexpected that trouble would come from the launch vehicle this time. ISRO's biggest worry had been the landing of the lunar probe. That was a technology that had only been tested in a simulated environment so far.

Chandrayaan-2 has had a series of setbacks since the time the mission was announced, soon after the success of of the first probe, Chandrayaan-1, in 2008.

Chandrayaan-2 was initially announced as a joint mission with Russia, which was supposed to provide the lander. But after the failure of the Fobos Grunt mission, Russia decided to review all its projects and said they would not be able to provide the lander in time.

India then began the R&D on the lander. This took years and finally, ISRO announced a launch for last summer. But a review of the lander showed it was kicking up too much dust when landing, so it went for another review. Then the scope of the mission expanded and the launch vehicle was changed from the GSLV Mk-II to Mk-III.

There have been a series of announcements of launch dates. This year itself,the date has shifted from January 2 to mid-April to finally July 15.

While a cancellation at the 11th hour is a disappointment, it is sheer luck that the snag was detected before the engines were fired. That could have led to a very serious accident, and the end of the Chandrayaan-2 probe.

Cancellations are not rare and are part of the intense testing and review mechanism.

Observers say it could take months before a review is done and a new launch window for Chandrayaan-2 is found.