Status: Success

Mission: Planetary Science

Chandrayaan-2 is India's second mission to the Moon. It consists of an orbiter, lander and rover. After reaching the 100 km lunar orbit, the lander housing the rover will separate from the orbiter. After a controlled descent, the lander will perform a soft landing on the lunar surface at a specified site and deploy the rover. Six-wheeled rover weighs around 20 kg and will operate on solar power. It will move around the landing site, performing lunar surface chemical analysis and relaying data back to Earth through the orbiter. The lander will be collecting data on Moon-quakes, thermal properties of the lunar surface, the density and variation of lunar surface plasma. The orbiter will be mapping lunar surface. Altogether, Chandrayaan-2 mission will collect scientific information on lunar topography, mineralogy, elemental abundance, lunar exosphere and signatures of hydroxyl and water-ice.