India ready for Chandrayaan II mission

February 29, 2016 Hot from the Oven Valli Sarvani No comments

A S Kiran Kumar, the chairman of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has given thumbs up for the readiness for Chandrayaan II mission. It will be the second mission of India to the moon.

With the success of the Chandrayaan mission, India is set to launch a more advanced Chandrayaan II mission. The mission consists of an Orbiter, Lander and Rover configuration. ISRO planned to launch this mission as a composite stack into the Earth Parking Orbit (EPO) of 170 X 18,500 km by GSLV-Mk II.

Kiran Kumar talked about the mission at the international conference on startups, incubators and entrepreneurship and National Science Day at Yenepoya University, Mangaluru. He said that the orbiter carries combined stack up to moon till the Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI). This combined stack is placed into a lunar orbit of 100 km x 100 km. The Lander is separated from the Orbiter in this orbit. The Orbiter will orbit around the moon carrying the payload.

On the other hand, the lander will have a soft landing on the moon at a particular site and deploy the rover. The payloads being sent on the Orbiter, Lander and Rover are set to perform mineralogical and elemental studies on the surface of moon.

It was planned in 2010 that Russian Space Agency ROSCOSMOS will be responsible for lunar Lander and ISRO will be responsible for Orbiter and Rover as well as Launch by GSLV according to a note on Chandrayaan II on ISRO website says.

However, there was a shift in the programmatic alignment of the mission. So, the Lunar Lander development was decided to be done by ISRO and the Chandrayaan II mission became a different mission.

Kiran Kumar talked about the achievements of various scientists at ISRO for the Chandrayaan I and Mangalyaan missions. He himself has developed several important scientific instruments for the missions.

Image credit: Moon Impact Probe image by Sri Harsha C is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0