Discover Moon's south Pole with Chandrayaan-2
Discover Moon's south Pole with Chandrayaan-2
Chandrayaan-2 is India's planned second mission to the moon, which was expected to launch in 2019. It is a follow-up mission from the Chandrayaan-1 mission that assisted in confirming the presence of water/hydroxyl on the moon in 2009.
Chandrayaan-2 will launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India, aboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket.
Chandrayaan-2's lander and rover are targeted for a location about 600 kilometers from the south Pole. The lander is expected to last about one lunar day, or 14 Earth-days; it is unclear if it will revive after falling into the darkness of a lunar night.
India has successfully launched the Chandrayaan-2 mission on July 22, 2019. The mission has send an orbiter, lander and rover to explore the moon's south pole. Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander is expected to land around Sept. 6.
The ISRO new mission will consist of an orbiter, a lander and a rover. The orbiter will perform mapping from an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 miles), while the lander will make a soft landing on the surface and send out the rover.
In the beginning ISRO planned to lunch mission with ROSCOSMOS. The two agencies signed an agreement in 2007 to launch the orbiter and lander in 2013. Russia later pulled out of the agreement.
The Russian lander's construction was delayed after the December 2011 failure of Roscosmos' Phobos-Grunt mission.
Orbiter contains instruments are given below:
*Chandra's Atmospheric Composition Explorer (ChACE-2), which is a neutral mass spectrometer. A predecessor instrument called CHACE flew on Chandrayaan-1's Moon Impact Probe.
*Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which will map the surface in radio waves. Some of its design is based on Chandrayaan-1's Mini SAR.
*Imaging Infra-Red Spectrometer (IIRS), which will measure the abundance of water/hydroxl on the surface.
*Orbiter High Resolution Camera (OHRC) to examine the surface, particularly the landing site of the lander and rover.
*Terrain Mapping Camera 2 (TMC-2), which will map the lunar surface in three dimensions using two on-board cameras.
Lander cantains instruments given below:
*The rover will carry two science instruments to look at the composition of the surface: the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) and the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer.
*Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA), to look for moonquakes.
*Chandra's Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE), to examine the surface's thermal properties.
*Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive ionosphere and Atmosphere (RAMBHA-Langmuir Probe.
Measurements taken by Chandrayaan-2 could be a help for future lunar missions.