One Year of Chandrayaan-2- Isro Gears Up for Chandrayaan-3, Gaganyaan

Business Standard One year of Chandrayaan-2: Isro gears up for Chandrayaan-3, Gaganyaan

Isro is now in the midst of preparations for its next ambitious mission, the Chandrayaan-3, and the first manned mission, the Gaganyaan.

India's historic lunar mission Chandrayan-2 completed its first anniversary on Wednesday. With the orbiter continuing to map the surface of the Moon, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) said in a statement: "Extensive data has been acquired from Chandrayaan-2 payloads and parameters are being derived for the presence of water-ice in the polar regions, X-ray based and infrared spectroscopic mineral information and mid and high latitude presence of Argon-40, a condensable gas on the moon."

While Isro in September 2019 lost contact with its Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover, which was to make a touchdown on the dark side of the Moon, the orbiter has a mission life of seven years. Isro Chairman K Sivan said the Chandrayaan-2 mission achieved 98 per cent of its objectives. He said the orbiter was doing well and performing scheduled science experiments.

What next for Isro?

Isro is now in the midst of preparations for its next ambitious mission, the Chandrayaan-3, and its first manned mission, the Gaganyaan.

Chandrayaan-3 Scientists will incorporate lessons learnt from the failure of the Chandryaan-2 into the third mission with robust design and capacity enhancement for mission flexibility. While the type of payloads the Chandrayaan-3 will carry remains unknown so far, if is believed to retain all the main objectives of the Chandryaan-2 and consist of payloads identical to those within the Vikram Lander and Pragyan Rover.