Chandrayaan-II will be a technical challenge: Mission director

India’s second mission to Moon ‘Chandrayaan-II’, expected to be launched in 2013, has many challenges for scientists and engineers, mission director M Annadurai said today.

“Chandrayaan-II will not be just a probe. It will be landing on moon and is an incrementally and technically challenging mission for Indian scientists,” Annadurai said in an interactive session with students at the South Indian Education Society (SIES) college at Sion in central Mumbai. The fact that water molecules have been confirmed on moon surface especially on the sunlit areas and their origin is not external sources like meteors (new postulate), it has become important to seek more exploration and Chandrayaan-II will be landing on moon to collect more data on it, he said.

Asked whether the scientists involved in Chandrayaan-I project will work for Chandrayaan-II, he said “yes” and added that even the same participants from abroad will be in the mission. Interest has been shown by other countries like Russia and “there is a chance of Russia participating in Chandrayaan-II mission,” he said. When asked how long it will take to analyse all the data collected from Chandrayaan-I mission, Annadurai said “it will take at least two to three and a half years for complete analysis.”

Annadurai said the missions like Chandrayaan-I are economically viable and cost-wise it is competitive as the Isro scientists use aggressive models.