India's Moon Exploration Program

omaebakabaka

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Very detailed about the tests conducted during CY-3 development phase as well as the team members involved in it
Excellent dedication and diligence. This is the base culture that is required in research orgs across the board to reduce the luck factor down to 1 to 3%. You always need some luck in space launches especially exo earth
 

Swesh

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Four things Chandrayaan-3 has taught us about the lunar south pole
In just two weeks, the Indian mission has made some surprising discoveries about the composition of the Moon

The Vikram lander as seen by the navigation camera on Pragyan Rover on Aug. 30, 2023.

The Vikram lander on the Moon, as photographed by the Pragyan rover.Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation via AP/Alamy
The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Moon lander Vikram and robotic rover Pragyan have now been told to go to sleep. ISRO hopes to awaken them at lunar dawn on 22 September.
But in their two-week sojourn around the Moon’s south pole, they provided insights that have planetary scientists abuzz. Here are some of the first remarkable findings.
A thin soup of ions and electrons swirls near the lunar pole
A probe onboard Vikram made the first measurements of the density and temperature of Moon’s ionosphere. ISRO reports a “relatively sparse” mix of ions and electrons in the 100-kilometre-thick layer of electrically charged plasma that surrounds the Moon’s surface near the south pole.
Initial measurements of the plasma indicate a density of about 5 million to 30 million electrons per cubic metre. And the density seems to vary as the lunar day progresses, an ISRO scientist analysing the Chandrayaan-3 mission's data told Nature. The peak density of a similar layer in Earth’s upper atmosphere is one million electrons per cubic centimetre.
The density of the ionosphere would affect lunar communication and navigation systems if humans were to inhabit the Moon — the higher the electron density, the longer radio signals take to travel through the ionosphere. The sparse plasma means that potential delays would be “minimal”, the scientist says, and would not pose a problem for transmission.
Temperature variations with depth
Understanding lunar soil, including its temperature and conductivity, will be important when considering settlement on the Moon. The soil “is an important in situ resource for construction”, says Anil Bhardwaj, director of ISRO’s Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad.
The lander is fitted with a temperature probe containing 10 sensors and able to reach 10 centimetres below the surface of the Moon. Its preliminary data show that during the day, the temperature 8 cm down is around 60 ºC lower than at the surface.
Planetary scientist Paul Hayne at the University of Colorado Boulder, says that a steep decline in temperature is expected during the lunar daytime, because the heat does not conduct downward from the warm sunlit surface. “This is similar to the effect one experiences when visiting a beach on a hot day — dig down just a few centimetres and the sand is much cooler,” he says.
Measurements so far have found that the temperature at the surface is significantly warmer than recorded by NASA’s 2009 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, adds Hayne.
The temperatures “are far too warm for water ice to be stable”, says Hayne, explaining that water converts from solid to gas at a very low temperature in the vacuum of space — at about −160 ºC. Chandrayaan-3’s data indicate temperatures warmer than −10 ºC at all depths sampled. Further down "we expect temperatures to flatten out at close to the average surface temperature of about −80 ºC,” says Hayne.
A suspected moonquake
Among many vibrations recorded by the lander’s seismograph, one in particular caught the attention of scientists. The instrument “seems to have recorded a very small seismic event that decayed to background in about 4 seconds”, says planetary geochemist Marc Norman at the Australian National University in Canberra. ISRO scientists suspect it was a small moonquake or the impact of a tiny meteorite.
Such perturbations are expected on the Moon. “Small impacts and local tectonic adjustments related to tidal forces are common on the Moon, but we really need a global seismic network on the Moon and longer-term observations to understand the significance of any particular event,” says Norman.
Sulfur confirmed
Testing by the rover unambiguously confirms the presence of sulfur in the lunar surface near the south pole, ISRO reports. It also found aluminium, silicon, calcium and iron, among other elements.
“Sulfur, being volatile, is not generally expected,” explains Bhardwaj. Confirmation of its presence is really important, say scientists. Sulfur is a key element of molten rock, and researchers think that the primitive Moon was covered with a thick layer of hot molten rock, which crystallized to form the Moon’s surface. Measurements of sulfur concentrations can provide insight into that process, says the ISRO scientist. However, it’s also possible that the sulfur came from asteroids that bombard the Moon’s surface. The ISRO scientist says they hope to add their findings to those of the US Apollo missions to better understand the Moon’s geochemistry.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02852-7

 

Super Flanker

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We should abandon this sample return mission.Lunar soil has been extensively studied and there is very little to discover.Rather they should plan for a manned landing mission.

Also they have given a timeline of 10 years which is just too long.By the time our lander would arrive to collect samples,some rich individuals would be celebrating their honeymoon in the moon.
I will respectfully disagree with this view. Going to the moon, retrieving a sample of lunar geology, getting it back to earth so that it can studied is very important as it will help validate our capabilities even further. We will get our sample, will do our own analysis and see what discoveries we can make. One can't say that the samples retrieved by the US has all its secrets disclosed to the Public by the Americans, there are always mysteries to be solved, with our own lunar sample mission, we will be free to research on our own and publish scientific papers on them. And we need to demonstrate bringing back samples from the moon, as it will help in any possibile manned missions to the moon in the near future.
 

Indx TechStyle

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Lunar soil has been extensively studied and there is very little to discover.
LOL. Not even 1%.
Also they have given a timeline of 10 years which is just too long.
No, that's a normal timeline.
By the time our lander would arrive to collect samples,some rich individuals would be celebrating their honeymoon in the moon.
No again, that's a hot air timeline as feasible as Elon landing humans on Mars in 2030. Nothing of this sort will happen.

Orbital tourism is minimum 20-25 years away from starting, extra terrestrial tourism will not start in at least 21st century.
First constraint will be the limited capabilities with most space agencies and second will be the money. Leave alone moon landing, a circumlunar manned spaceflight will bankrupt biggest billionaires in world even if launched on an RLV.
 

Swesh

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ISRO-JAXA LUPEX Rover
The following are the list of instruments proposed by PRL in ISRO-JAXA rover, mainly to carry out measurements at surface and subsurface near the permanently shadowed polar region of the Moon. First round of review by ADCOS is completed​
Permittivity and Thermo-physical Investigation for Moon’s Aquatic Scout (PRATHIMA)
Objective of this is in-situ detection and quantification of water-ice mixed with lunar surface and sub-surface soil using a rover/lander platform. The proposed experiment consists of a multipurpose probe that will be deployed into ~20-30 cm of the lunar surface to scout and quantify the presence of water-ice. This instrument is shortlisted to be flown on the LUPEX Rover and Lander.​
Alpha Particle Spectrometer (APS)
APS will measure the alpha particles in the decay chain to understand the volatile transport on the lunar surface along with measurements from LEGRS. This instrument is shortlisted to fly in Lander/Rover.​
Low Energy Gamma Ray Spectrometer (LEGRS)
This instrument is aimed at measuring low energy gamma ray line at 46.5 keV to study the volatile transport on the Moon using Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT) Detectors. This instrument will also measure the Uranium (U) and Thorium (Th) concentrations in the PSPR region. This instrument is shortlisted to fly in Lander/Rover.​
LUnar Micrometeorite EXperiment (LUMEX)
To measure flux, velocity and mass of incoming micrometeorites on moon and derive volatile escape from the lunar surface. Also to understand the dust environment due to micrometeorite bombardment. This instrument is being developed and the feasibility of flying on the Lander is being explored.​
Lunar Electrostatic Dust EXperiment (LEDEX)
To detect presence of charged dust particles and confirm the dust levitation process in volatile-rich polar region. To estimate approximate dust size and flux of charged, levitated dust particles. This instrument is being developed and the feasibility of flying on Lander is being explored.​
 

Swesh

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Formation of lunar surface water associated with high-energy electrons in Earth’s magnetotail
S. Li, A. R. Poppe, T. M. Orlando, B. M. Jones, O. J. Tucker, W. M. Farrell & A. R. Hendrix
Nature Astronomy (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract
Solar wind implantation is thought to be one of the primary mechanisms in the formation of water (OH/H2O) on the surface of the Moon and possibly on the surface of other airless bodies. The lunar nearside spends ~27% of its daytime in Earth’s magnetotail where the solar wind flux is reduced by as much as ~99%. However, no correlated decrease in surficial water content has yet been seen on the lunar nearside. Here we report abundance observations of lunar surficial water on the nearside at different stages during the Moon’s passage through Earth’s magnetotail. We find that the water abundance at lunar mid-latitudes substantially increases in the dusk and dawn magnetosheath when the solar wind flux increases, yet remains nearly constant across the central magnetotail. We suggest that although we have confirmed the importance of the solar wind as a major source of fast water production on the Moon, hitherto unobserved properties of the plasma sheet properties may also play an important role.
 

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