Chandrayaan-2 will carry Nasa payload too, will calculate Earth-Moon distance

Bengaluru: The nation’s second Moon mission Chandrayaan-2 will have 13 payloads and a passive experiment from American space agency NASA, said the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Wednesday. “Thirteen Indian payloads (8 on the orbiter, 3 on lander and 2 on rover) and one passive experiment from NASA,” said ISRO  in a mission update. However, ISRO did not specify its objective.

The spacecraft with a mass of 3.8 tonnes has three modules namely Orbiter, Lander (Vikram) and Rover (Pragyan). All the modules are getting ready for Chandrayaan-2 launch during the window of July 9 to July 16, 2019, with an expected Moon landing on September 6, the space agency had said earlier this month.

The orbiter will orbit 100 km from the lunar surface, while lander (Vikram) will do the soft landing near the south pole of the moon, and Rover (Pragyan) will conduct in-situ experiments. 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, said ISRO. Notably, the rover is housed inside the lander.