K Sivan, ISRO chairman said on Monday that chandrayaan 2 has finally completed more than 9000 orbits around the moon and also provided brilliant data of Earth’s natural satellite, remembering the 2-year completion of the operation of the chandrayaan 2 orbiter. In today’s lunar science workshop 2021, K Sivan said that at around 100 Km altitude from the lunar surface, the orbiter’s 8 payloads are conducting remote sensing and in-situ observations of the moon. He further said that “till the Chandrayaan 2 has completed more than 9000 around the Moon.” Along with the data which was provided by the orbiter payloads, the ISRO chairman has also released Chandrayaan 2 data product and science documents.
“Besides the significant finding of the unambiguous presence of hydroxyl and water molecules on the lunar surface the instruments onboard the orbiter has also been able to capture nanoflares”, K Sivan told Times of India after the workshop was over. He also said that the data on nanofluids will be proven helpful as it will help to find out why the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere, that is the sun’s corona is hotter than its surface.Â
The ISRO chairman also said that ISRO has finally uploaded their data obtained from Chandrayaan 2 to the official website. They have uploaded the raw data to the public domain as the scientific community all around the country can have a look at this data and study this data thus carrying out new science. And using this raw data’s new information about the moon can also be generated.
ISRO has stated that a total of around 1.25 TB data of orbitals payloads have been released mostly between December 2020 and July 2021 in the public domain for science use. It said that in the future more data sets will be added to the public domain.
Mentioning the botched landing of the Vikram lander the document said, “Vikram lander descent was as planned and normal performance was observed up to an altitude of 2.1 km”. As a result, the communication between the lander and the group stations was lost and the lander landed hard on the lunar surface.
The chairman of Apex Science Board of ISRO, A S Kiran Kumar, said that chandrayaan 2 is incorporated with many new features in its instruments and this helps to take the observations which were carried out by chandrayaan 1 to a higher and newer level.
Chandrayaan 2 mission was the successor of the Chandrayaan mission. The mission of the Chandrayaan 2 included an orbiter, lander, and rover, which was designed so that it can explore the lunar South pole. The mission also proved useful to study not just one area of the moon but the whole area which also combines with the exosphere, the surface, as well as the subsurface of the moon. On July 22 2019 it was launched on board GSLV MK III. The mission finally reached lunar orbit on August 20. Till September 6 the mission was running smoothly as planned. But on September 6 the lander and rover were set to land on the far side of the moon after being separated from the orbiter. Unfortunately, it did not go as planned as the lander and rover crash-landed on the surface of the moon.
Even though the lander and the rover were crashed in this accident the orbiter continued to operate in the lunar orbit till now and provided essential data and observations of the surface. ISRO has also stated that they will also include this orbiter in their Chandrayaan 3 mission which is likely to be launched in 2022.
