• USSR's Luna- 2 craft took just 34 hour to reach Moon in 1959
• Ten years later on july 20,1969, Nasa's Apollo- 11 mission carrying humans landed on Moon in just four days, 6 hour and 45 minutes
• Chandrayaan- 2 will take 48 days to reach Moon due to the amount of fuel it's carrying and the speed of lunarcraft
Have you wondered why Chandrayaan- 2 will take 48 days to reach Moon whereas missions launched by USSR and US over five decades ago reached the lunar surface in under a few days?
USSR's Luna- 2 craft took just 34 hours to reach Moon in 1959. Ten years later on July 20,1969, Nasa's Apollo- 11 mission carrying human landed on Moon in just 4 days. 6 hour and 45 minutes. Beside being the world's first manned Moon mission, Apollo- 11 was also the fastest trip of astronauts to Moon.
So why Chabdrayaan- 2 taking move than a month? The answer lies in the build of the rocket, the amount of fuel it's carrying and the speed of the lunarcraft.
In space, covering long distances requires high speed and straight trajectories. For Apollo- 11 , Nasa had used Saturn V , a super heavylift launcher , to travel at more than 39,000 per hour. The powerful rocket had a lifting capability of 43 tonnes , including the lunar module, service module and command module housing the crew capsule. Saturn V s third stage put the modules ( command with crew capsule , service and lunar modules) into the translunar trajectory aoon after orbiting Earth for the seccond time.
The launcher and the lunar craft used powerful engines to reach Moon covering 3.8 lakh km in just four days. However , Nasa had to pump in $185 million ( $1.2 billion in 2016 value) for each Apollo mission between 1969 & 1971.of the $ 185 million it spent $ 110 million ( $ 690 mollion in 2016 value) on building every saturn V.
