NEW DELHI: Indian space agency says $140 million module has reached distance of 100 kilometers from moon’s surface and is set to land on Saturday.
The landing module of India’s unmanned moon mission separated successfully from the orbiter on Monday ahead of its planned touchdown on the moon’s south polar region this weekend, the country’s space agency said.
All the systems of the orbiter and the lander are “healthy,” the Indian Space Research Organization said in a statement.
Monday’s manoeuvre removed the lander from the orbiter’s top, where it had been sitting since the mission took off from southern India on July 22.
The module has reached a distance of about 10 km from the moon’s surface, the space agency said.
It will attempt India’s first moon landing on a relatively flat surface on Saturday to study previously discovered water deposits.
The roughly $140 million mission is known as Chandrayaan-2, the Sanskrit word for “moon craft.”
If India does manage the landing, it willl be only the fourth country to do so after the United States, Russia and China.
India plans to send humans into space by 2022.
Chandrayaan-1 orbited the moon in 2008 and helped confirm the presence of water.
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