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So this thread was going to be about the launch by @isro of #Chandrayaan2 - India's 🇮🇳 second lunar mission. The unmanned mission was scheduled to launch on 14 July and land on the moon’s surface in early September... newscientist.com/article/220954…
…but the #Chandrayaan2 mission was put on hold at the last minute due to “a technical snag”, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation, @ISRO …
Leaving a lot of people disappointed 😞
@ISRO planned to launch aboard India’s most powerful rocket, the GSLV Mk III, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, and include an orbiter, a lander called Vikram, and a small rover called Pragyan. Vikram and Pragyan were designed to last just one lunar day – about 14 Earth days
#Chandrayaan2 had been planned as the successor to Chandrayaan 1, which @ISRO launched in October 2008. That mission confirmed there was water on the moon. But it lost contact with Earth in August 2009 newscientist.com/article/dn1771…
While the plan was for #Chandrayaan2 to take India back to the moon, we’ve looked at what it will take for India to go back to Mars. After @isro launched @Marsorbiter mission in 2013, what happened next? newscientist.com/article/dn2452…
Nations including India, the US, China, Israel and Russia are all vying to leave Earth again. But why – and are we ready for a second space age? newscientist.com/article/mg2423… 
There’s lots more on the space race, and features from our #Apollo50th anniversary issue, here newscientist.com/article-topic/…
