Minutes after India successfully launched the Chandrayaan 2 at 2:43 pm today, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K Sivan thanked the engineers involved in the "mammoth task" of ensuring that the issues leading to the postponement of a previous lift-off attempt last week were swiftly resolved. "This is the beginning of India's historic journey towards the moon, to land at a place near the lunar south pole for carrying out scientific experiments and exploring the unexplored. We had suffered a serious technical snag during our first attempt, but ISRO has now bounced back with flying colours," he said at a press conference held after the launch.
