![The launch of India's latest space mission was aborted with less than an hour to go due to a technical problem, and no new launch date was given for the Chandrayaan-2 mission, which will explore the lunar South Pole [Manish Swarup/AP]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/7/15/589217264d8d4bfb96fc537647ef174b_18.jpg "Earthbound: India's moon lander launch cancelled for now")
With 56 minutes to go, the digital clock just to the right of the video screens inside India's Satish Dhawan Space Centre's press briefing room suddenly stopped. With no live-stream video and only a stopped clock to watch, it was clear something was not quite right with the lunar lander-rover mission.
Twelve minutes before the scheduled launch, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), India's space agency, tweeted: "A technical snag was observed in launch vehicle system at T-56 minute. As a measure of abundant precaution, #Chandrayaan2 launch has been called off for today. [A] revised launch date will be announced later."
Monday morning's aborted attempt to launch the Chandrayaan-2 mission would have been the latest nail-biting step in India's space programme. And it would have been nothing less than a giant technological leap for the developing country.
India's 1.3 billion people must now wait for ISRO to explain just what went wrong, what corrections are being made and announce a new date for their nation's next attempt at making history.
Chandrayaan-2 is a highly challenging multi-stage moon mission to place into lunar orbit a spacecraft carrying a landing craft and a lunar a rover. What makes this mission so special is that should the orbiter reach the moon, the lunar lander should separate from the main spacecraft and attempt a controlled descent to land on the moon's surface at the south pole.
What ISRO hopes to attempt is called a "soft landing", a technological feat that only the former Soviet Union, the US and China have so far achieved on the moon. In April an Israeli team saw their Beresheet lander fail to slow down and then slam into the lunar surface, creating another crater and leaving their mission in pieces.
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