India to launch mission to explore moon’s south pole

The lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, under which the ISRO will for the first time attempt to land a rover on the moon’s south pole, will be launched in April, Minister of State for Department of Space Jitendra Singh said on Friday

The lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, under which the ISRO will for the first time attempt to land a rover on the moon’s south pole, will be launched in April, Minister of State for Department of Space Jitendra Singh said on Friday. Chandrayaan-2 will be ISRO’s first inter-planetary mission to land a rover on any celestial body.

“India is going to launch Chandrayaan-2 in April. It is under Chandrayaan-1 mission that the ISRO spotted water on the moon. Chandrayaan-2 is a further extension of the project and it is as good as landing a man on the moon,” Singh said.

The rover of India’s second lunar mission, which will cost nearly Rs 800 crore, will be made to land near the yet-unexplored south pole, said ISRO’s newly-appointed chairman K Sivan. Sivan said it the south-pole is a “very tricky area” with rocks formed a million years ago. “It has very old rocks. This could possibly help us understand the origin of universe,” he said. “Most of the lunar missions in the past have explored the area around the equator of the moon,” he added.

Sivan noted that the window to launch the mission is between April and November this year. “The targeted date is April. In case we miss the April date, we will launch it in November,” he said.

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