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Further Reading

Luna-Resource/Chandrayaan-2

9-07-10

India’s India’s, Russian Federation Luna-Resource/Chandrayaan-2 Mission

India’s and Russia’s cooperative Luna-Resource/Chandrayaan-2 mission is to consist of a Indian ISRO developed lunar orbiting spacecraft, and a Russian Federal Space Agency developed lunar Lander spacecraft to deliver the fixed lunar station of 30-35 kilograms of Russia with up to 10 instruments possible including a 1 meter depth lunar drill and the small 15 kilogram powered Luna-Resource Roving Spacecraft of India to the lunar surface . Both the Lander and the Rover will have their own robotic arms capable of gathering samples for testing. The primary aim of the mission is to detect lunar water indications. Once trans-lunar injection of the Luna-Resource/Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft has taken place the orbiter and Lander will separate and place themselves into lunar orbit through separate operations.

India ’s orbiter and lunar rover will utilize a total of seven science payload packages with five for the lunar orbiter and two on the lunar rover. The mass of the Orbiter is 1,400 kilograms the Russian, Luna-Resource Lander with its various payloads is 1,250 kilograms for a total Chandrayaan-2 payload mass of 2,650 kilograms. It will be launched with the Russian supplied Luna-Resource Lander stage with its scientific packages perhaps numbering up to three in total.

The Chandrayaan-2 Lunar Resource Rover will have two scientific packages to lunar surface materials analysis. The two instruments are the:

1. The Laser induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS)

2. The Alpha Particle Induced X-ray Spectroscope (APIXS)

Chandrayaan-2 Luna-Orbiting-Resource spacecraft with it five scientific payloads packages are as follows:

1. The Terrain Mapping Camera-2 (TMC-2) to help develop three dimensional lunar maps on its geology and materials mineralogy.

2. The Neutral Mass Spectrometer (ChACE-2 for lunar exosphere studies.

3. The IR Imaging Spectrometer (IIRS) to map the lunar surface through a wide wavelength range mineral logy study along with its hydroxyl examination analysis.

4. The Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) with its Solar X-ray monitor (XSM) again for mapping the primary material elements on the lunar surface.

5. The L & S band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) that will be utilized to probe the depths of the surface several tens of meters looking for various materials such as water ice on the Lunar poles.

This Luna-Resource mission is expected to be launched in 2013 on the Indian GSLV mark-2 booster the un-successfully flown indigenous design tested in April 2010 or GSLV-3 mark-3 is also suggested as the booster to be used . The international payload launch will be from India ’s Satish Dhawan Space Center , Sriharikota

It was further suggested in March 2010 by Prime Minister Putin that Russia and India join capabilities to explore the moon as a continuation of the existing agreements for unmanned missions to the moon that will expire in 2017. The need to identify priority cooperative joint missions is also based on the five year planning process used by Roscosmos for 2011- 2015 as well as post 2015-2020.