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Joint Russian robotic mission to herald India's presence on Moon | India and Russia have jointly started working on a robotic mission, whereby the Russian-built four-legged platform will deliver around 35kg of scientific equipment to the lunar surface and release a 15kg Indian-built robotic rover. It would "demonstrate India's presence on the surface of the Moon".
"We do understand that, first of all, it is a demonstration of the Indian presence
on the surface of the Moon," the BBC quoted Aleksandr Zakharov, a leading scientist
at the Space Research Institute (IKI) in Moscow, as saying. Known in Russia as
Luna-Resource and in India as Chandrayaan-2, the joint mission will include an
Indian-built lunar orbiter and the Russian-built landing platform both launched
by a single Indian rocket. "However, it will have a TV camera onboard, and we
also asked our Indian partners to include a miniature manipulator, so it could
sample soil beyond the reach of the robotic arm of the (stationary Russian) lander,"
he added. Zakharov also said that the rover and all of its scientific instruments
are expected to be Indian-built, even though India is free to solicit foreign
participation. It is likely to be launched in 2013, to roughly match the scheduled
lunar landing of China's Chang'e-3 spacecraft. Whichever team gets there first,
it would be the first human hardware to function on the lunar surface since the
Soviet Luna-24 spacecraft returned to Earth with Moon's soil samples in 1976.
Despite being a far cry from the 750 kg Soviet Lunokhod rovers, which rolled across
the lunar landscape in the 1970s, the tiny Indian electric vehicle is still expected
to provide scientific data with the help of a miniature manipulator. According
to the Russian space industry officials, the main focus of the scientific instruments
would be the geochemical analysis of the lunar soil, including the detection of
water. Confirming the existence of lunar water became especially important for
planetary scientists in 1990s, after a US probe found signs of water ice around
the lunar poles. According to Zakharov, a drilling mechanism, which is being considered
for the Luna-Resource mission could penetrate as deep as 1metre below the surface
and with some luck achieve the pioneering feat of "touching" lunar water. |
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