Context:
- With Chandrayaan-3 successfully landing on the Moon’s surface, decks have been cleared for ISRO to unveil the next stage of its lunar exploration programme.
Lunar Polar Exploration
- ISRO is preparing for one more lunar mission, this one in collaboration with Japanese space agency, JAXA. This mission, called LUPEX, or Lunar Polar Exploration, is slated for 2024-25. But there would be more in the Chandrayaan series as well.
Where on Moon?
- LUPEX will offer ISRO another opportunity to probe the surface of the Moon.
- One half of the Moon never faces the Sun, and is therefore permanently dark. To land in these areas, the spacecraft and the onboard instruments have to have an alternative power supply option through an onboard battery.
Objective:
- LUPEX is also planned to investigate the abundance of water in the Polar Regions, and explore the possibilities of locating a long-term station in these areas.
- LUPEX will also explore the polar regions of the Moon, this time venturing into the permanently shaded regions.
- The launch vehicle and rover are supposed to be contributed by the Japanese agency, while the lander will come from ISRO. Incidentally.
Follow-up Chandrayaan missions
- The Chandrayaan programme will not end with Chandrayaan-3. There are many more things to do. It is natural to expect follow-up missions Chandrayaan-4, Chandrayaan-5 and so on.
- If Chandrayaan-2 had succeeded in landing, Chandrayaan-3 would have been a sample return mission. Now, maybe Chandrayaan-4 will be the sample return mission whenever it is planned. That is the next logical step to a lander and rover mission.
- A sample return mission involves a spacecraft that can collect samples from the Moon’s surface and return to Earth. A returning spacecraft, and that too from the surface of the Moon and not just from space, adds several newer levels of complexity to a lander and rover mission. China did a sample return mission with Chang’e-5 in 2020.
Solar Mission
- The immediate priority for ISRO is the Aditya-L1, its first mission to the Sun, which is slated for an early September launch. Aditya-L1 will observe the Sun.
- It is meant to study the different kinds of phenomena like solar corona, solar emissions, solar winds and flares, and coronal mass ejections. It will also do an imaging of the Sun.
Gaganyaan
- ISRO is working on sending an Orbiter to Venus within the next two years while the human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan, is also being readied.