Chandrayaan -II Mission so close and yet bit far 🙏

We Indians have always been fascinated by that astronomical body that orbits the planet and even the distance of 384,400 km from earth never made us feel that its an alien to us. It was always so close yet so far.

If mythology tells us Chand as one of the young and most good looking deities worshipped all over, the aura and love for it, has remained throughout ages even today.

चंदा मामा दूर के, पुए पकाए बूर के
आप खाए थाली मे, मुन्ने को दे प्याली मे !

The beautiful words made us connect instantly with that soothing Chandamama and the child in us could stop crying, eat instantly and could just spend many nights staring at him.

If the child in us slept instantly, Chand had an exactly opposite effect when it came to youngsters. It became a reason for them to keep awake the whole night as

रात का समा, झूमे चंद्रमा, तन मोरा नाचे रे, जैसे बिजुरियाँ
रात का समा !

to an extreme of

एक बात मान लो तुम, जो कहूँ मैं वो करो तुम
जो करो तो मेरा वादा, मैं करूँगी जो कहो तुम, तुम
तुम मुझको चाँद लाके दो !

All through the childhood to young romantic minds or religious old age, we never lost our love for that eternal Chand.

But there was one entity called ISRO, which never lost its focus on looking at Chand as an imapctful body which has capabilities to change the way mankind has lived so far. The belief by them made an attempt, what no one had done so far.

If Chandrayaan-I was about designing, developing and launching a mission to conduct scientific experiments. Chandrayaan-II was far more ambitious as it was about to demonstrate the ability to soft-land on the lunar surface and operate a robotic rover on the surface. The robot then would have studied and made us aware about the surface of the moon, minerals or test ice or water.

The moment of success was almost there and for a change 😊 kids, youngsters or oldies had the same goal for looking at that Chand and prayed for the 100% success of the mission. It was not to be ☹️. Nevertheless, being almost there has brought many success stories as well. Only 2.1 km remained out of those humongous 384,400 km.

As ISRO says, mission is 95% success and the Orbiter is already in its place which will keep the scientists continue their studies of the beloved Chand, though the communication is lost as of now. ‘Never Give Up’ mantra will keep ISRO on the job and hope they find a way to bridge that communication gap.

As they say, sometimes bad luck is more important than smooth sailing as it teaches us to be grounded, brings people closer, gives an opportunity to do better and the success what follows is always far larger than one anticipates in the first attempt.

As an Indian, let’s not forget that ISRO is those special ones amongst us who had the same childhood memories, young crush and respecting those age old customs or traditions and they will keep working hard till they achieve that eluded 5% success to be back on track.

Soon, the ISRO will make the those words real for us 🙏🙏

चौदहवीं का चाँद हो, या आफ़ताब हो
जो भी हो तुम खुदा कि क़सम, लाजवाब हो !

Image Courtesy: Geek

Disclaimer: The blog is a personal way of looking at the Chandryaan-II mission from common man’s perspective and salutes those extraordinaries amongst us. It does not comment on the mission, the technology or any individual.