ISRO Chief Signals India's Readiness for Chandrayaan II Mission

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman A S Kiran Kumar on Sunday signaled country's readiness for Chandrayaan II mission, which will be India's second mission to the moon. Chandrayaan II is an advanced version of the previous Chandrayaan-1 mission. It consists of an Orbiter, Lander and Rover configuration. It is planned to be launched as a composite stack into the Earth Parking Orbit (EPO) of 170 X 18,500 km by GSLV-Mk II.

Kiran Kumar, who was in the city in connection with the international conference on startups, incubators and entrepreneurship and National Science Day at Yenepoya University, said the orbiter carries the combined stack up to moon till the Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI). The combined stack is then inserted into a lunar orbit of 100 km x 100 km. The Lander is separated from the Orbiter in this orbit. The Orbiter with scientific payloads will orbit around the moon.

The Lander will soft land on the moon at a specified site and deploy the Rover. The scientific payloads onboard the Orbiter, Lander and Rover are expected to perform mineralogical and elemental studies of the lunar surface. During 2010, it was agreed 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, a note on Chandrayaan II on ISRO website says.

Later, due to a shift in the programmatic alignment of this mission, it was decided that the Lunar Lander development would be done by ISRO and Chandrayaan-2 will be totally an Indian mission. Kiran Kumar, who is credited with development of key scientific instruments aboard the Chandrayaan I and Mangalyaan space crafts, gave an insight on achievements and contributions made by the scientists at ISRO including the Chandrayaan I and Mangalyaan.

ISRO chief told students that ISRO makes available the data collected by them to the students for research work at their website. Students had an inquisitive interactive session with Kiran Kumar after his address. Yenepoya Abdulla Kunhi, Chancellor, Yenepoya University graced the occasion. Shree Kumar Menon, director, Yenepoya University proposed vote of thanks. Earlier, Dr Akhter Hussein, secretary of Islamic Academy of Education, welcomed the gathering.

 

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