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- ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2’s lander and rover has been tested on a simulated surface at Lunar Terrain Test Facility (LTTF) in Bengaluru.
- Chandrayaan-2, India’s second Moon mission, will be launched on July 15, 2019
- Chandrayaan 2 will comprise of an Orbiter, Lander named ‘Vikram’ and Rover named ‘Pragyan’. The orbiter will circle the moon and provide information about its surface.
- The lander will carry a camera, a seismometer, a thermal instrument and a NASA-supplied laser retroreflector that will help calculate the distance between the Earth and the moon
- The lander will make a soft landing near the lunar South and send out the rover. The rover will be used mostly for in situ experiments. Only Russia, USA and China have soft landed on moon so far.
- Chandrayaan-2 will launch aboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III, (GSLV -MK III) rocket. The GSLV-Mk III is a three-stage heavy lift launch vehicle that has been designed to carry four-tonne class satellites into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO)
- Chandrayaan-2 is a follow-up mission from the Chandrayaan-1 mission- India’s first lunar mission. It was launched in October 2008 and operated till August 2009. The mission included a lunar orbiter and an impactor.
