Bengaluru (Karnataka): The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which is working on Chandrayaan-3, has now formed a study group for another moon mission with Japanese space agency JAXA.
A joint mission between ISRO and JAXA, was in the freezer as ISRO was focusing on Chandrayaan and a manned mission to space. Senior scientists have now confirmed that Japan moon mission is back on the table.
In the ISRO-JAXA mission, Japan will be launching a joint lunar mission — Lunar Polar Exploration (LPE) — and as details shared by JAXA, the mission will be launched after 2023 and will involve a lander and a rover.
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The mission will be launched from Japan, and the designated launch vehicle is the H3 rocket, manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
“What we will design for the Indo-Japan mission will be subject to how the systems on Chandrayaan-3 will perform and whether or not we will be able to achieve a successful landing next year. Earlier this month, we got an internal communication about the study group, which means that the project is back on track,” ISRO scientist said.
According to JAXA, study of observational data suggests the existence of water in the polar regions of the Moon. The mission’s aim is to obtain actual data regarding the quantity of water and the areas where water is anticipated to exist based on the available past observational data.
It also seeks to understand the distribution, conditions and form on the moon's polar regions.
