Chandrayaan-2: India’s Second Lunar Exploration Mission

Santosh Kosambe

doi:10.3844/jastsp.2019.221.236

Abstract

The Moon has always been the center of attention for mankind, more than any other heavenly body in the night sky. With the early history of the solar system etched on it, the Moon challenges mankind from time immemorial to discover its secrets and admire its marvels. Understanding the Moon will provide us a pathway to unravel the early evolution of the solar system and that of planet Earth. Almost twelve years after its first lunar exploration mission, India bounced back towards Moon with Chandrayaan-2. India’s most advanced engineering marvel Chandrayaan-2 is on a mission unlike any before. Leveraging nearly a decade of scientific research and engineering development, India’s second lunar expedition will shed light on a completely unexplored region of the Moon, its South Polar Region. The indigenously built Chandrayaan-2 consists of an orbiter, a lander (Vikram) along with a rover (Pragyan). With the payload of completely home-grown technologies, it will help us to gain a better understanding of the origin and evolution of the Moon by conducting detailed topographical studies, comprehensive mineralogical analysis and a host of other experiments. The Chandrayaan-2 is India’s first robotic exploration mission to attempt a soft landing on the South Polar Region of the Moon. With the success of this mission, India became the fifth country ever to attempt a soft landing on the lunar surface. This paper provides an insight into the Chandrayaan-2 Mission. Additionally, an overview of the mission profile, challenges involved, launch vehicle architecture, spacecraft configuration and scientific payloads are also presented.

Highlights

The Moon is the largest and brightest celestial object present in the night sky
The paper provides an insight into Chandrayaan-2, India’s second lunar exploration mission
The challenges involved in lunar exploration and soft landing missions are explained

Summary

Introduction

The Moon is the largest and brightest celestial object present in the night sky. As the only natural satellite of the Earth, it has been a subject of study to scientists and researchers all over the world. In between 1959 to 1976, the Soviet Union launched several robotic spacecraft missions either as an orbiter or a lander to explore the Moon. The proper planning of EBM’s, launch vehicle insertion parameters and lunar capture geometry with respect to Sun and Earth further extended the life of the mission The orbital parameters such as the position of spacecraft at a specific date and time of separation were determined precisely and required corrections were made to ensure that the spacecraft was at a separation point at the predetermined time. The study of data from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument onboard LRO is of very importance to identify the potential landing sites on lunar surface for the Chandrayaan-2 mission. The alternate site as a backup for the lander ALS01 is located at 67.870 S and 18.460 W (Amitabh and Srinivasan, 2018)

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Conclusion

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