Context

ISRO plans to launch Chandrayaan-2, the lunar lander mission during July 9-16 which will carry 14 Indian payloads or study devices.

About

Chandrayaan-2

• Chandrayaan-2 will be India’s second mission to the moon and is totally an indigenous mission. ISRO will send the mission on its heavy lift booster, the MkIII, from Sriharikota.
• The 3,800-kg spacecraft includes an orbiter which will circle the moon at 100 km; a five-legged lander called Vikram (named after Vikram Sarabhai, who is widely regarded as the father of the Indian Space Programme) that will descend on the moon on or around September 6; and a robotic rover, Pragyan, that will probe the lunar terrain around it and will be used mostly for in-situ experiments, mainly for science.
• While the orbiter will carry 8 payloads, the Vikram will have four and the Pragyan will have two payloads.
• Chandrayaan-2 would orbit around the moon to collect scientific information on lunar topography, mineralogy, elemental abundance, lunar exosphere and signatures of hydroxyl and water-ice.
• The Orbiter and Lander modules will be interfaced mechanically and stacked together as an integrated module and accommodated inside the GSLV MK-III launch vehicle. The Rover is housed inside the Lander.
• It will launch aboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III, (GSLV -MK III) rocket. The GSLV-Mk III is a three-stage heavy lift launch vehicle that has been designed to carry four-tonne class satellites into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO).
  
  

  Background:

  • In October 2008, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had launched its orbiter mission Chandrayaan-1 on its PSLV booster. The spacecraft had 11 payloads. One of the U.S. payloads shares credit with Chandrayaan-1 for confirming the presence of water ice on the moon. Before that, the Moon Impacter Probe carrying the Indian tricolour image was made to hard-land on the lunar South Pole.