Nail Biting Sunday : Two exciting close encounters in sporting events and a last minute aborted Chandrayaan 2 Mission.

Nail Biting Sunday : Two exciting close encounters in sporting events and a last minute aborted Chandrayaan 2 Mission. 

Sunday, the 14th of July, was a day full of nail biting moments for TV spectators - particularly in India - which started with the cricket World Cup, 2019, finals played between the hosts England and New Zealand and an equally fascinating Wimbledon finals, played between arch rivals Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. What an exciting finals both these two games turned out to be, the former ending with both teams tied even-steven even after the super over and England declared the eventual winners by virtue of some strange ICC rules, while in the later, Djokovic overcame some anxious moments - including facing two championship points - against the veteran, Federer to win the equally coveted Wimbledon championship in a thrilling marathon five set match. If this excitement was not enough, there was more to come as night progressed. 

The excitement continued for tens of millions of Indians who stayed awake late into the night waiting to watch - live - the historic lift off of the Chandrayaan 2 mission scheduled to take off at 2.51 hours on early Monday morning. Most news channels and the media - both the print and web - had hyped up the launch of Chandrayaan 2 to an unprecedented heights, added to this, the Honourable President of India was to witness this launch live from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, creating that much more excitement in the mission. Incidentally this July also happens to be the 50th year of the historic Apollo 11 Lunar mission, which created history. Apollo 11 Lunar Module, Eagle, carrying three astronauts, landed on the moon on the 20th of July, 1969 and the subsequent small step that Neil Armstrong took on the surface of the moon, has resulted in India taking this giant step forward in space exploration, aiming to launch the Chandrayaan 2 mission and achieve what no other country has so far succeeded, in soft landing its Vikram Lander on the south polar region of the moon, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of mans landing on moon and the centenary of Vikram Sarabhai, ISRO’s founder. 

I was one of those tens of millions of Indians who remained awake late night on Sunday - early Monday morning - to witness live, India make tryst with its moon mission. Many news channels and several other Internet sites and You Tube were beaming live the launch of Chandrayaan 2 mission, for which the count down had begun in the early hours of July 14, 2019, at precisely 6.51 am, the customary 20 hour countdown for the launch. As the final hour of the countdown began so did the excitement, raising the hopes of millions of Indians for the success of the mission and the spacecraft reaching the moon and soft landing on it, which until now had been achieved only by Russia, USA and China. The recent efforts of Israel, and so also the earlier efforts of Japan and European Space agency had met with failures. With the start of the countdown, the clock in the mission control room started ticking backwards, signalling the scheduled launch at 2:51 am on July 15, 2019. The control panel in the launch control room came alive and displayed all the vital parameters of the launch vehicle, which were followed by the initiation of various steps of the launch sequences one by one. Every steps pointed to yet another successful ISRO launch until the initiation of the last significant step in the launch sequence, of filling fuel tanks of the third stage cryogenic rocket with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

At T-156 minutes, 12:15 AM on 15th July, came an announcement of filling of Liquid oxygen. Another 79 minutes of countdown went by and at 1.34 AM, 77 minutes to the scheduled launch (T-77), ISRO tweeted completion of the filling of Liquid Hydrogen and asked the followers to stay tuned for updates. The countdown kept ticking and with it the excitement. With less than an hour for the Chandrayaan 2 launch, suddenly some thing seem to have gone wrong with the launch, reaffirming Murphy’s law. The display screens went blank and the countdown clock stopped ticking, stopping at T-56:24. No one seem to know what exactly had happened, was it a power outage or something more serious, every one including the ISRO officials, who were interacting with the media, were as perplexed as the rest of us, with no specific answers. 

It was very well known that there was a limited window of opportunity for the launching of Chandrayaan mission and as time clicked from seconds to minutes a sense of gloom dawned and the worst fears of abortion of the mission soon came to dawn upon everyone. After waiting anxiously for another 45 minutes or so, an official announcement was made by ISRO representative - my friend, Guruprasad - who read out the official ISRO statement “ A technical snag was observed in launch vehicle system at T-56 minute and the Chandrayaan 2 launch has been called off and the revised launch date will be announced later”. Disappointment it was, but then all space missions are riddled with some of the most difficult technological challenges and there are in place checks and balances to try and minimise the errors which may lead to failures of the missions. Fortunately for ISRO the technical snag was noticed before disaster could vanquish the mission. All those who remained awake late into the night to witness yet another monumental success of ISRO mission were deeply disappointed. But then fortunately the snag was noticed by ISRO before it was too late. Let us hope ISRO manages to correct the technical snag as early as possible and begin the fresh count down. Until then let us all continue to support our scientists and the support staff of ISRO who have made our nation proud on innumerable occasions and will do so for yet another time and succeed in the Chandrayaan 2 mission as well.