An expert explains: ‘Seven minutes of terror’ approach. Beyond lies a new world of opportunity | Explained News, The Indian Express

An expert explains: ‘Seven minutes of terror’ approach. Beyond lies a new world of opportunity | Explained News, The Indian Express

Written by Amitabha Ghosh |Edited by Explained Desk |Updated: September 6, 2019 3:51:58 pm

An expert explains: ‘Seven minutes of terror’ approach. Beyond lies a new world of opportunity

A celebrated NASA scientist explains the significance of the Chandrayaan-2 mission – for ISRO, India, the world, and humankind as a whole.

Chandrayaan-2 might provide information related to the location of water ice deposits in permanently shadowed craters on the Moon.

Five hundred years back, it took sheer courage to try to explore lands separated by oceans: the distance at the time was of the order of 10,000 miles. Similarly, today, space exploration is not for the faint of heart: the distances that a spacecraft travels is of the order of 100,000 miles for the Moon, 100 million miles for Mars, and a billion miles for a mission to Pluto. Television animation has made space exploration look deceptively simple: there is an animation that plays of the landing, there are shots of the mission control room that erupts in cheers: but the technology, the human effort, and the nerves that are needed to undertake such a journey are of an altogether different order.