ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 mission , which is India’s second mission to the moon is going to commence between 9 July and 16 July.
The Indian space agency has said in a statement that all the modules necessary for the mission are getting ready. The landing on the lunar surface is expected to be by 6 September and ISRO plans to include a lander, an orbiter and a rover to land. It is targetted to land on the south pole of the moon.
The rocket which will launch the mission towards the moon will be the GSLV Mk-III rocket wherein the lunar craft will be propelled into the moon’s orbit via the orbiter. As soon as the lunar craft has landed a rover will roll-out and carry out experiments on the moon.
Chandrayaan-1 was India’s first lunar mission and it was a successful one. The mission consisted of an orbiting spacecraft and a lunar impactor. The mission was designed to last two years, but the Indian Space Research Organisation lost contact with the orbiter after almost a year in operation. It has since been found .
Scientists from Brown University in the US used a new calibration of data taken from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper, which flew aboard Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft , to quantify how much water is present on a global scale.
With inputs from PTI