Chandrayaan 2 is the first of several major/interplanetary mission on ISRO's agenda for the years ahead. The Gaganyaan manned mission planned for 2022 is one of the better-known ones, but missions to study Mars, the Moon, Venus, the Sun's corona and interplanetary space are also on the cards. For more about each of them, head here.
In another recent briefing not too long ago, Dr K Sivan, ISRO's Chairman announced the agency's ambitions to have a space station in orbit, as a way to sustain the capabilities and the capacity being built in the country by the Gaganyaan mission, the indigenous human spaceflight programme.
Will ISRO try to operate the lander & rover after the long, lunar night?
After the 14-day lunar day, during which time the lander and rover will carry out their missions, the lunar night could leave both instruments damaged due to the extreme, continuous exposure to frigid lunar temperatures. The spacecraft will likely NOT survive it, but if it does... the solar cells will charge up the instruments and we have left a battery backup for such an occasion. If we're lucky, they will survive it, but it cannot be guaranteed, the chairman said.
How ISRO plans to get around the moon dust problem
To get around the sharp, jagged-edged dust blowing up from the surface of the moon during landing, all the engines except one (the main) engine will be switched off. The engine that will stay on will only push the dust horizontally, thereby keeping the spacecraft risk-free in this regard.
Soft-landing will use a new configuration & means of operating thrusters
Separation from orbiter isn't a crucial part of the mission.
For the Vikram lander to land softly in a controlled manner, and will use a new technique, with throttlable control over the engine's thrusters. This is something ISRO is attempting for the first time, says the chairman.
Communication link doubles as 2-way health-check
The lander and orbiter both have independent communication links with the deep space network (DSN). Any action from the orbiter will be communicated to the lander and vice versa. Whether it's health of an instrument or progress on the mission, we will be assured of the health of both components this way.
'World is eager for data from Chandrayaan 2'
"The landing site in the South polar region is somewhere no mission has previously been, the world is eager to know what the mission will find here," says the chairman. The water and mineral deposits in the region are particularly interesting, he added.
Early this morning, the Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft, India's second moon mission, successfully made its way into the moon's orbit after a four-week sojourn. The Indian Space Research Organisation has called a briefing to share details about what next for the mission after entering the moon's orbit. Chandrayaan 2 successfully completed a major milestone today by breaking away from the Earth's orbit and entering the moon's orbit of influence. This is one of the few remaining critical milestones in the mission before the spacecraft attempts a soft-landing in the moon's South Polar region on 7 September.
Now that the lunar capture, or entry of the spacecraft into lunar orbit, was completed without a hitch or glitch, the two-week (lunar-bound) phase of the mission begins.
This is an important part of the orbiter's mission: surveilling its year-long home for the first time, ensuring that no damage was caused to its instruments on the journey thus far, and a thorough examination of the Vikram lander's landing site at the moon's South Polar region.
Chandrayaan 2 is expected to make its long-awaited powered descent and landing on 7 September in what the ISRO Chief describes as '15 minutes of terror'.
While subsequent events in the mission won't be streamed live, you can catch live updates on the mission on our dedicated Chandrayaan 2 domain, our Twitter page, ISRO's website, or Twitter page.
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The satellite is an outcome of a collaboration between the American space agency NASA and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
The low Earth satellite, Megha-Tropiques-1 (MT1), was launched on October 12, 2011, as a joint satellite venture of ISRO and the French space agency, CNES for tropical weather and climate studies
