Chandrayaan 2 launched: Narendra Modi, Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, others congratulate ISRO

At 02.43 pm IST on 22 July, ISRO successfully launched  its highly awaited second mission to the Moon — Chandrayaan 2. It was carried aboard the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III-M1 (GSLV MkIII-M1) rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. As of this afternoon, GSLV MK III successfully injected the Chandrayaan 2 payload into a pre-defined orbit, and it’s now headed to the moon where it is expected to  soft-land at the lunar south pole on 7 September. [caption id=“attachment_6989781” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”] Chandrayaan-2 launch will kick off at 2:51 am on 15 July.[/caption] Seconds after launch, Twitter was flooded with congratulatory tweets with posts from the President of India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bollywood actors Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar, and many others. President Ram Nath Kovind shared a four-part tweet congratulating Team ISRO.

The Prime Minister too extended his wishes.

Sushma Swaraj salutes India’s space agency…

Akshay Kumar was quick to tweet too!

Shah Rukh Khan did what he does best… he made the launch a little filmy!

Former cricketer Virendra Sehwag also congratulated ISRO on the ‘seamless launch’.

…and these tweets are still coming in. After all, it’s a very proud moment!

But guess what makes these Twitter reactions even better? YOU!

The $146 million mission will enable India to carry out studies on the presence of water on the south pole of the moon. Only the United States, Russia and China have been on the moon. The rocket, carrying the unmanned Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, blasted off from a southern Indian space centre to cheers from thousands of onlookers, a live telecast showed. The launch had been delayed by a week due to a technical snag.