ISRO completes Chandrayaan-2 design
17 Aug 2009
Bangalore: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has completed the design of the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, slated to be the agency's next mission to the moon. To be conducted jointly with Russia, the mission will involve putting a lander and a rover on the lunar surface to collect and analyse samples of lunar soil.
"Right now, the design has been completed. We had a joint review with Russian scientists here," ISRO chairman, G Madhavan Nair said.
The proposed Chandrayaan-2 design will 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 mission is slated for the end of 2012.
The target location for the lander/rover would be identified using data collected by the ongoing Chandrayaan-1 mission.
Chandrayaan-1 is India's unmanned mission to the moon, which was launched on 22 October last year. It is currently orbiting the moon at an altitude of 200km.
Under the division of responsibility, ISRO will develop the orbiter, while Russia will design and construct the lander and the rover. Additional scientific payloads may be taken onboard from international contributors.
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