India delays its lunar launch of Chandrayaan 2 mission minutes before launch

Indian Chandrayaan 2 mission was to send an orbiter, lander and rover to the lunar south pole, Trend reports citing Sputnik.

It was planned hat the Indian Space Research Organisation would launch Chandrayaan-2 mission from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 5:21pm EDT (21:51 GMT)

​However, Indian space agency said it delayed the launch, in the early hours of Monday due to a "technical snag" which was observed less than an hour before the scheduled start.

The Chandrayaan-2 is India's second lunar exploration mission, preceded by the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, which was sent to the Moon in 2008. The first spacecraft comprised a lunar orbiter and a lander, while the second mission is more advanced than its predecessor and is equipped with an orbiter, a lander and a rover. The launch was originally scheduled for April 2018 but then was postponed several times for undisclosed reasons.

The mission's lander is named Vikram after the ISRO's founder, Vikram Sarabhai. The mission will also have a small rover named Pragyan (wisdom) that will study the mineralogical and chemical composition of the lunar surface, while the mother ship will orbit the Moon at an approximately 100 km distance, taking pictures and sending them to Earth.