India is planning to launch its third lunar mission by mid-2023. The mission will follow Chandrayaan-2, which failed to land on the Moon last September but did gather data that suggests water may exist on the Moon.
The new probe is designed to land in the highlands near the Moon’s south pole, where no other mission has ever gone before. It will explore this area for signs of life and potential mineral deposits.
According to a Defence News report, ISRO’s lander will be fully autonomous so that it won’t have human astronauts onboard. Instead, it will have multiple sensors to help it scan the landing zone and adjust its speed to avoid rocks and other hazards.
It will also have a laser doppler velocimeter, always designed to identify and measure the surface’s velocity. This will allow the lander to be guided to a spot and deploy a rover.
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ISRO has been clear that this mission will be more challenging than its predecessor, launched in 2018. The agency’s chair, S. Somanath, says that the main objective of Chandrayaan-3 is to give the lander “a precise landing.”
A lot of work is being done on this, including building new instruments, better algorithms, and taking care of failure modes, Somanath said in an interview with The Times of India.
The lander’s impact legs have been strengthened and will be equipped with “better instrumentation.” Somanath says the craft will have better software as well. This will make it more difficult for the lander to crash and burn.
Somanath says ISRO has added a lot of failsafes after witnessing the lander’s failure on its previous mission, which will increase its chance of survival. It has also added more robust sensors, which should be able to detect rocks and other obstacles that could cause damage.
ISRO is reportedly also working on making the lander more energy efficient by using the sun’s radiation as power. This is a good idea because the lander will be exposed to the sun’s heat throughout its entire journey, so it needs to be able to cool down.
During its trip to the Moon, the lander will undergo multiple tests to ensure it is safe for landing. One of these is the Lander Sensor Performance Test (LSPT), which will involve flying the lander’s sensors over an artificial lunar surface to see how they perform.
The LSPT will help ISRO learn what kinds of sensors can be effective in a planetary landing. It will also help the agency test new systems that it may have to use on future planetary missions.
The mission’s schedule is still being formulated, but it will be ready to be launched by mid-2023. If everything goes to plan, the lander will be sent into space aboard a GSLV rocket in August 2022.
