Chandrayaan-2 to begin its journey towards moon early tomorrow

"On August 20, we will be reaching the moon". The move will put the spacecraft on a trajectory that will put the probe into orbit around the moon on August 20. We plan to have a series of manoeuvres around Moon.

It will finally land near the south pole of the moon on September 7, Sivan said. "This is our plan".

"At around 3.30 am on August 14, we are going to have a maneuver called trans-lunar injection".

The ISRO chief further revealed since the launch of the Chandrayaan-2 on 22 July, the three-module spacecraft successfully completed five manoeuvres and was now moving around Earth.

The Chandrayaan-2 mission to the moon blasted into space on 22 July one week after a technical glitch forced ISRO scientists to halt its scheduled launch.

It is to be mentioned that Chandrayaan-2 is India's second lunar exploration mission after Chandrayaan-1.

Once it's in lunar orbit 100 kilometres above the surface, the spacecraft will send a lander on a controlled descent to the surface.

It will be subjected to a series of orbit maneuvers in the coming weeks to take it to the vicinity of the moon, with the rover soft landing planned on September 7.

Sivan also said the spacecraft was "doing very well" at present and all its systems were functioning properly. "This is for the first time we are going to have this mission", noted Sivan. The announcement of the Gaganyaan project was first made past year by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Independence Day when he said "a son or daughter of India will go to space" by 2022.