With NASA disclosing that its payload on board India’s Chandrayaan-1 orbiter has found “frozen water deposits in polar regions of the moon”, ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 mission, to be launched in the first week of January, will get an edge as it is going for deeper exploration in the same region — the south pole of the moon. Talking to TOI, ISRO chief K Sivan said, “NASA findings are good and useful. The Chandrayaan-2 lander will do a soft-landing on the south pole of the moon and the rover will analyse the content there. The mission will give us more data which will enrich our knowledge about the moon.” He said further exploration will help us find out if humans can inhabit the place in future. Sivan said, “The three key components of Chandrayaan-2 — orbiter, lander and rover—will carry 13 payloads for mapping terrain and look for minerals, water or ice formations. Unlike last time when Chandrayaan-1 carried foreign payloads, this time there won’t be anyone on NASA’s payload Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) finding ice in the shadows of the crater, former ISRO chief Kiran Kumar told TOI, “Had we not launched Chandrayaan-1, foreign payloads like NASA’s M3 would not have made this discovery.” On Chandrayaan-2, he said, “Significant improvement has been made on scientific payloads this time for deep exploration. The payload in the Chandrayaan-1 could scan wavelength up to 3 micron but we have increased the capacity of the Chandrayaan-2 payload. It can scan wavelength up to 5 micron or 5,000 nano metre (our eyes can see wavelength of 400 to 700 nano metre). So, whatever is emitted from the surface will be picked up by this payload. It will improve the assessment of the lunar surface.” He said, “The laser instrument on the rover will fire laser pulses at the surface, which will thus emit ions. These emissions will be scanned and will help the rover analyse the content.”
Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
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