Chandrayaan-5 mission: India, Japan to enter design phase
Indian and Japanese space agencies working on the Chandrayaan-5 mission, aimed at deeper exploration of the Moon's surface, mainly for water, will soon commence the preliminary design phase of the lander and the rover.
'The instrument selections have been done, the engineering model testing is almost done and both India and Japan are entering the preliminary design phase,' according to Asoh Dai, Project Manager, LUPEX, at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
Chandrayaan-5, also known as LUPEX (Lunar Polar Exploration), is a joint project between ISRO and JAXA to study water and water-ice both on the lunar surface and the subsurface. Weighing 6.5 tonnes, it is proposed to lift off on a Japanese rocket, H3, sometime in 2027-28.
Using the rover, JAXA teams plan to trace areas on the Moon with presence of water, sample the nearby soil or regolith by drilling into the surface. The onboard instruments will measure the water content and its quality and perform other in-situ observations.
The Cabinet approved Chandrayaan-5 in March this year, more than a year after India became the first country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon's south pole with Chandrayaan-3. The proposed Chandrayaan-4 mission will be a return sample mission: samples dug from the Moon will be brought to Earth for ISRO to study the mineral composition of the lunar surface.
Dai was speaking at the Global Space Exploration conference held in New Delhi last week. At the event, ISRO chief V Narayanan said Chandrayaan-5 mission is proposed to be for 3.5 months (100 days).
ISRO is developing Chandrayaan-5's lander whereas JAXA is building the 350-kg rover. There will be seven scientific instruments onboard, some contributed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. ESA is developing the mass spectrometer and NASA the neutron spectrometers — both are currently in the design phase.
Spectrometers are specialised scientific instruments that aid in performing in-situ (at the site) experiments requiring calculation of the energy and mass of samples. These experiments help understand the evolution of the composition of hydrogen and other elements.
'One of the (seven) instruments will be a large one and shall have four sensors, of which one is being developed by ISRO and the other three by JAXA,' said Dai.
The rover will be designed and programmed by JAXA to travel certain distances on the lunar surface and climb hills up to an inclination of 25 degrees. 'The batteries' charging (of the rover) have been planned in such a way that they will be charged once each before and after sample collection. This is very complex,' said Dai.
On the LUPEX mission life, he said: 'If everything goes well as planned, then towards the end of the mission, we hope to go to the far side of the Moon. And if possible, extend the mission life by a year.'
A JAXA team is visiting ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru this week to hold discussions.
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