Overview and Technical Architecture of India's Chandrayaan-2 Mission to the Moon

Abstract

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) began India's planetary exploration program with the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1 orbiter mission to the Moon in 2008. The eleven remote-sensing scientific instruments from ISRO, NASA and ESA onboard Chandrayaan-1 have made significant findings including discovery of water signature, spinel minerals, lunar lava tubes, evidences of recent volcanism, impact-triggered boulder movements and discovery of sputtered atomic oxygen and backscattered helium on the lunar surface. The first Indian inter-planetary mission, Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) with five science payloads was successfully launched by a PSLV rocket on November 5, 2013 and entered an elliptical orbit around planet Mars on September 24, 2014. The Mars Orbiter is currently observing Mars surface features, morphology, mineralogy and the Martian atmosphere. The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft to the Moon is a composite module consisting of Orbiter, Lander and Rover. Chandrayaan-2 Mission is planned to be launched onboard Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) during first quarter of 2018. The Orbiter will carry the combined stack up to moon till the Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI). The combined stack is then inserted into a lunar orbit of 100 km x 100 km. The Lander with the Rover is then planned to be separated from the Orbiter for soft-landing on a site near south polar lunar surface. This paper presents an overview of the technology and science objectives of India's Chandrayaan-2 Mission to the Moon, spacecraft architecture, science instruments, launch vehicle, mission design and operations.

PSO-Based Soft Lunar Landing with Hazard Avoidance: Analysis and Experimentation

“…This paper considers a polynomial guidance, so that the landing trajectory is approximated by means of polynomials. In particular, the following polynomials are chosen to approximate each component of the position vector: 13) must also fulfill the boundary constraints listed in Equations ( 4) and (5). This means that five coefficients of each polynomial are actually fixed, whereas one (for each polynomial) remains a free parameter (in this case a 12 , a 22 , a 32 , respectively) and represents the optimization variable.…”

“…In recent years, space agencies have experienced a renewed interest in lunar robotic missions. Indeed, China National Space Administration and Indian Space Research Organization are involved in the Chang'e [1][2][3] and the Chandrayaan [4,5] project respectively: both the projects are made up of multiple missions directed to the Moon which exploit orbiters, landers, rovers, and sample return spacecraft. Moreover, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (South Korea) and Roscomos (Russia) are planning to explore the Moon thanks to the mission Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter [6] and the program Luna [7].…”

Large Area High-Resolution 3D Mapping of the Von Kármán Crater: Landing Site for the Chang’E-4 Lander and Yutu-2 Rover

“…Over the last two decades, large-area 3D mapping of the lunar surface has been pursued intensively through laser altimetry and stereo imaging via a variety of lunar orbital missions from space agencies around the world. These include the Japanese Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE; Kaguya) mission (launched in 2007) [1], the Chinese Chang'E-1 (CE-1; launched in 2007) and Chang'E-2 (CE-2; launched in 2010) missions [2][3][4], the Indian Chandrayaan-1 (launched in 2008) [5] and Chandrayaan-2 (launched in 2019) [6] missions, the U.S. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission (launched in 2009) [7], and the Korean KPLO (Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter) Danuri mission (launched in 2022) [8].…”

Remote Sensing and Data Analyses on Planetary Topography

“…In the 21st century, planetary mapping missions with higher resolution and wider range were implemented, including Cassini [11,12], Mars Express [13], and even the Pluto and Kuiper belt missions by New Horizons [14]. Now, the missions by new peers such as Chandrayaan [15,16], Chang'e [17][18][19], Tianwen series [20], and Emirates Mars mission [21] have been newly joined for the construction of topographic data. Since then, with properly rectified images and other sources of topographic data applied by improved photogrammetric techniques, the outcomes of planetary topographic remote sensing have been available for scientific research as well as public interactions.…”