The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief S Somanath said on April 10, 2024 that the upcoming phase of the Chandrayaan-4 project is in progress, aiming to advance India’s lunar exploration efforts. He Indicated that Chandrayaan-4 marks the initial stride towards Indian aspirations of landing an astronaut on the moon by 2040.
Addressing a press conference, Somanath said, “Chandrayaan-4 is a concept that we are now developing as a continuation of the Chandrayaan series and our honourable PM Narendra Modi has announced that an Indian will land on the moon in 2040. So, if that has to happen, then we have to have continuous moon exploration of various kinds.
“Chandrayaan-4 is the first step in this direction to step up a craft on the moon and coming back to Earth. It demonstrates the full cycle of going to the moon and coming back to earth,” he added. Somanath further said that ISRO is working on plenty of other projects from rocket and satellite projects to technology development projects.
“There are plenty. We have major projects, rocket projects, satellite projects, application projects, and technology development projects. Rocket projects are around 5-10, satellite projects are around 30-40, application projects are in 100 along with R&D projects are in the 1000’s” he added.
India has made successful and significant strides in space exploration with the successful landing of Chadrayaan-3 lander module on the south pole of the Moon on August 23, 2023 marking a historic achievement as the first country to accomplish this feat.
As far as Chandrayaan-4 project is concerned it will be more challenging than its predecessor projects namely Chandrayaan-2 and 3, said Somanath. He said there is a need for the multiple launchers for this mission. Chandrayaan-3 mission was launched in a single phase. The mission has to demonstrate return and re-enter the earth for sample delivery.
He also said the team must have docking capability either on Earth Orbit or the Moon Orbit and failure in docking mission can fail the mission. There needs to be robotic capability to operate a drill and select a sample and load it in compartments to keep the samples safe. One of the objectives of the mission will be demonstrate the samples from one module to another module.
The ISRO Chief then talked about technical capabilities, “We first started with remote sensing, then we will look at the in-situ observations and the third phase will be to bring the lunar samples back to earth for greater laboratory observation and analysis,” Somanath said.
The upcoming lunar mission will include five spacecraft modules, Re-Entry Module (RM), Transfer Module, Ascender Module, Descender Module and Propulsion Module. It will involve a PSLV and LVM3 as launch vehicle options.
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