SATURDAY, JULY 13, 2019 11 India’s low-cost mission

Orbital Experiment Chandrayaan-2 • India’s second lunar mission, scheduled to launch in July will be operational Expected arrival on the moon: September 6 for 1 year Primary objective Scientific Experiment To demonstrate the on• Moon for 1 Lunar ability to soft-land on Vikram lander the lunar surface and 1,471 kg, day (14 earth days) operate a robotic including 27 kg rover Pragyan rover India has spent (a solar-powered about• $140 million to get 6-wheel vehicle) Chandrayaan-2 ready

The United States Scienti c goals spent• about $25 billion Studies of lunar Orbiter topography, 2,379 kg -- the equivalent of mineralogy, more than $100 billion elemental abundance, in current prices -- on the lunar exosphere, 15 Apollo missions and signs of water ice

Almost the entire Source: ISRO/NASA Chandrayaan-2’s• orbiter, lander and rover Geosynchronous have been designed Satellite Launch and made in India Vehicle Mark-III (GSLV Mk-III) • GSLV Mk III will carry the 2.4 he GSLV Mk-III will car- tonne orbiter Try Chandrayaan 2 to its designated orbit. This three- Sriharikota, India stage vehicle is India’s most powerful launcher to date, and is capable of launching ndia will step up the inter- 4-ton class of satellites to national space race on Mon- the Geosynchronous Trans- Iday when it launches a low- fer Orbit (GTO). cost mission to become only the fourth country to land a probe on the Moon. Orbiter Just five days before the 50th t the time of launch, the Chan- anniversary of man’s first lu - Adrayaan 2 Orbiter will be capa- nar landing, Chandrayaan-2 -- ble of communicating with Indian or Moon Chariot 2 -- will blast Deep Space Network (IDSN) at By- off from a tropical island off alalu as well as the Vikram Lander. Andhra Pradesh state after a The mission life of the Orbiter is decade-long build-up. one year and it will be placed in a The mission will also high- 100X100 km lunar polar orbit. light how far space travel has Weight - 2379kg advanced since Neil Armstrong’s Power generation capacity - 1000 W giant leap for mankind during the mission. India has spent about $140 Lander — Vikram million to get Chandrayaan-2 he Lander of Chandrayaan 2 is ready for the 384,400 kilometres Tnamed Vikram after Dr Vikram (around 240,000 miles) trip A Sarabhai, the Father of the Indian from the Satish Dhawan Space Space Programme. It is designed to Centre to the scheduled land- function for one lunar day, which is ing on the lunar South Pole on equivalent to about 14 Earth days. September 6. Vikram has the capability to com- The United States spent about municate with IDSN at Byalalu near $25 billion -- the equivalent of Bangalore, as well as with the Orbit- more than $100 billion in cur- er and Rover. rent prices -- on 15 Apollo mis- Key payloads sions, including the six that put Rover — Pragyan Armstrong and other astronauts Chandrayaan 2 Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer - for studying Elemental composition of the Moon on the Moon. handrayaan 2’s Rover is a China landed its Chang’e 4 Imaging IR Spectrometer - for mineralogy mapping and water-ice confirmation C6-wheeled robotic vehicle named lunar craft in January, and spent Synthetic Aperture Radar L & S Band - for polar-region mapping and sub-surface water-ice confirmation Pragyan, which translates to ‘wis- $8.4 billion on its entire space Orbiter High Resolution Camera - for high-resolution topography mapping dom’ in Sanskrit. It can travel up to programme in 2017, according 500 m (½-a-km) and leverages solar to international Organisation Chandra’s Surface Thermo-physical Experiment - for thermal conductivity and temperature gradient energy for its functioning. It can only for Economic Cooperation and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope - In-situ elemental analysis and communicate with the Lander. (ISRO) Development figures. abundance in the vicinity of landing site And Russia -- the first coun- try to land an unmanned Moon becoming increasingly compet- NASA researcher now with Stan- rocket in 1966 -- spent more than itive”. ford University, examined the $20 billion at today’s values on gramme (60-pound) rover Prag- “a fossil record of the early solar that we should ask ourselves Amitabha Ghosh, a scientist cost-effectiveness of the Indian lunar missions in the 1960s and yan -- to a high plain between system”. in this context is not whether for NASA’s Rover mission to Mars orbiter against the Ameri- 70s. two craters on the lunar South Despite the relatively small India should undertake such Mars, said the benefits of Chan- can Maven mission. Pole. budget, the mission does raise ambitious space ventures, but drayaan-2 are huge, compared Although both launched in Spiced-up space race Indian Space Research Organ- questions about how funds are whether India can afford to ig- to its cost. 2013, Maven is estimated to have Almost the entire Chan - isation (ISRO) chief K. Sivan said allocated when the country is nore it,” said K. Kasturirangan, a “A spacecraft mission of the cost 10 times more, but India’s drayaan-2’s orbiter, lander and Vikram’s 15-minute final descent still battling hunger and poverty. former ISRO chief. complexity of Chandrayaan-2 Mangalyaan was only designed rover have been designed and “will be the most terrifying mo- But national pride is at stake: India has to aim to be a leader conveys a message that India to last about a year. made in India. ments as we have never under- Prime Minister Narendra Modi in space, he added. is capable of delivering on dif- “The US mission was required India will use its most pow- taken such a complex mission”. has vowed to send a manned Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, ficult technology development to last two years. That’s a big dif- erful rocket launcher, GSLV Mk The solar-powered rover can mission into orbit by 2022. head of space policy at the Ob- endeavours,” said Ghosh. ference in cost,” said Hubbard. III, to carry the 2.4 tonne orbiter, travel up to 500 metres (yards) Most experts say the geo-stra- server Research Foundation, However, some experts say And Mangalyaan’s payload was which has a mission life of about and is expected to work for one tegic stakes are small -- but that a New Delhi think tank, said anyone looking for a cheap tick- 15 kg, while Maven could carry a year. lunar day, the equivalent of 14 India’s low-cost model could Chandrayaan-2 will enhance the et to space should think of the 65 kg with more sophisticated The spacecraft will carry the Earth days. win commercial satellite and nation’s reputation “at a time comfort on low-cost plane rides instruments. 1.4 tonne lander Vikram -- which Sivan said the probe will be orbiting deals. when the global and particularly, closer to Earth. “So you get what you pay for,” in turn will take the 27-kilo - looking for signs of water and “The fundamental question the Asian space programmes are Scott Hubbard, a former top concluded Hubbard.