India completes design of Chandrayaan-2, its next moon mission

Ramnath Shenoy

Bangalore, Aug 16 (PTI) India has completed the design of
Chandrayaan-2, its next mission to the moon -- this time in
collaboration with Russia -- that would have a lander and
rover which can collect samples of the lunar soil and analyse
them and send back the data.

"Right now, the design has been completed. We had a joint
review with Russian scientists here," Chairman of Indian Space
Research Organisation, G Madhavan Nair, told PTI.

According to the Bangalore-headquartered space agency,
the Chandrayaan-2 mission would have an orbital flight vehicle
constituting an Orbital Craft (OC) and a Lunar Craft (LC) that
would carry a soft landing system up to Lunar Transfer
Trajectory (LTT).

The target location for the lander-rover would be
identified using data from instruments of Chandrayaan-1,
India's own and first unmanned mission to the Moon launched on
October 22 last year.

While ISRO will be developing the orbiter, it will be
Russia's job to make the lander and rover. Additional
scientific payloads would be acquired from international
scientific community.

"Next (now that design has been completed) we will go
towards prototype building, which will be taken up next year,"
Nair, also secretary in the Department of Space, said.

Nair said ISRO has learnt plenty of lessons from
Chandrayaan-1 mission, particularly on the thermal and
redundancy management fronts and would seek to improve systems
in Chandrayaan-2, slated towards the end of 2012.

"I think we have got very valuable inputs on the heat
radiation from the moon's surface and so on. Accordingly, the
thermal design of the future aircraft can be addressed," he
said. "Radiation is much beyond our expectations, so we will
have to see how the radiation hardening has to be
strengthened."

"Then, in redundancy management also, there are some
inputs which are available from this (Chandrayaan-1), which we
will try to incorporate in Chandrayaan-2."

The ISRO Chairman said contingency operations undertaken
by the organisation following the failure of Chandrayaan-1
spacecraft's onboard star sensor earlier this year have worked
well and "this is (now) as precise as it was earlier."

"We are able to locate the cameras at specific
locations," he said noting some of the stereo images that
have come recently. "The fact that we were able to point the
spacecraft towards the Earth and capture the (recent) solar
eclipse, shows the accuracy of the system."

Nair said 95 per cent of the scientific objectives of
Chandrayaan-1 mission have been achieved. "Another five per
cent, what's left out, we will try to take up in the next
season which is starting in October so that we can complete
all the observations."

Nair said India's ground station at Byalalu on the city
outskirts has given precision as good as the NASA station.
"We are comparing both the tracking results."

On how the US and Europe, which have flown instruments on
board Chandrayaan-1, have taken to the failure of star sensor,
Nair said, "They have got more than sufficient data with them
and are extremely happy. Now, Indian and foreign scientists
are working together to analyse the data and they have
promised some results before the year end."

Three-dimensional pictures of the moon would be
available soon, he said.

On the agenda for scientists' meet to discuss the
Chandrayaan-1 project next month, Nair said ISRO wants to
ensure that it has not "left out anything".

"Today, we know that there is no redundancy on board.
So, if further failure...if it happens, then we will be
crippled.

"So, all the scientific objectives have to be completed
in the remaining time. We will discuss with them what is
pending and what needs to be done. Secondly, if some of them
have got preliminary findings then we will try to make an
assessment." PTI RS
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