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Chandrayaan-2 mapping lunar surface as per mission plan: ISRO

WION Web Team
New Delhi, Delhi, IndiaUpdated: Jul 23, 2020, 12:25 AM IST
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File photo. Photograph:(Others)

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The Chandrayaan-2 entered the Lumar orbit on August 20, 2019. 

India's Chandrayaan-2 mission has marked one year of its launch by GSLV MkIII-M1 and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has said that all of its payloads are performing well. 

On July 22, 2019, ISRO launched the GSLV MkIII-M1 carrying Chandrayaan-2 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. It kept revolving around the Earth's orbit for 23 days and on August 14 that craft commenced its journey to the moon. 

The Chandrayaan-2 entered the Lumar orbit on August 20, 2019. 

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On Tuesday, India's space agency confirmed that all eight payloads on Chandrayaan-2 were performing well and global mapping of the lunar surface and polar coverage are being carried out as per the mission plan. 

In a statement, ISRO said: "Extensive data has been acquired from Chandrayaan-2 payloads and parameters are being derived for (i) presence of water-ice in the polar regions, (ii) X-ray based and Infrared spectroscopic mineral information and (iii) mid and high latitude presence of Argon-40, a condensable gas on the Moon which gets released internally by the radioactive decay of 40 K."

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Initially, ISRO was planning to release the major findings from Chandrayaan-2 science experiments at the Annual Lunar Planetary Science Conference in March 2020 but it was called off due to coronavirus. Now, the data will be released in October wherein details for accessing the data will be provided, it said. 

The Orbiter carrying Orbiter High-Resolution Camera (OHRC) has clicked 22 orbit images of lunar surface consisting of nearly 1056 sq. km area and is also used to characterise landing sites for future missions.