India to go solo on second lunar mission

AHMEDABAD: India has decided on its second journey to the moon—Chandrayaan-2—without Russian participation. The tentative date for lift-off is 2015 from the Sriharikota facility. This was announced by space scientist S V S Murty of the Ahmedabad-based Physical Research Laboratory's (PRL) planetary exploration group during a conference on Monday.

The original mission envisaged the nearly Rs 425-crore Chandrayaan-2 having an indigenous rocket and a rover with a Russian lander. But Murty said, "The Russian lander is being replaced by an indigenous lunar lander." The decision comes after the failure of a Russian space mission, Phobos-Grunt in January 2012, which was supposed to test the lander.

Murthy said that the replacement of the Russian lander with an indigenous one would call for a change in the mission profile as well. The lander is being designed and developed by the Space Applications Centre (SAC) in Ahmedabad. Its preliminary configuration study has been completed.

The orbiter will have five payloads, while the six-wheeled rover has two. The orbiter will operate from an altitude of 200 km above the moon's surface. "Chandrayaan-2 will carry out an intensive investigation of a localized area of the moon having high scientific value," he said.

The rocket will be the three-stage Geo Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle powered by an indigenous cryogenic engine. All the payloads of Chandrayaan-2 are indigenous in contrast to Chandrayaan-1 which had six foreign payloads and five from India.