ISRO completes design of Chandrayaan-2

After its success with its first unmanned lunar arbiter, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has begun preparation for the ambitious Chandrayaan-2, a joint venture with Russia that will have a moon rover supplied by the latter.

ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair told that the design of the mission was complete and the space organisation would be building the orbital flight vehicle while the '''Lunar Craft' would be supplied by Russia.

ISRO would be building the entire spacecraft that would also have other scientific payloads acquired internationally.

''The landing of the rover would be decided after we analyse the data sent by Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Now we are set to build a prototype of Chandrayaan-2 and this would happen next year. We will build upon our success with Chandrayaan-1,'' he said.

ISRO had gained lot of positives from the first lunar mission and received valuable inputs on heat radiation on moon's surface.

Accordingly the thermal design of future aircraft would be made, Mr Nair said.

The high solar radiation had caused malfunction of 'Star Sensor' on Chandrayaan-1 in April this year, after the spacecraft had completed six months in lunar orbit and sent back useful data. This necessitated the space scientists to take the space craft up to 200 km radius from 100 km, effectively reducing its functioning.

The ISRO Chief said 95 per cent of the scientific objective of Chandrayaan-1 mission had been achieved and the remaining five per cent of what was left out would be taken up during the next season starting this October.

The redundancy factor would be the utmost on the minds of the scientists working on Chandrayaan-2 after their good experience with the first mission, Mr Nair added.