SRIHARIKOTA: Isro’s second lunarcraft Chandrayaan-2 will not only attempt to put India in the elite space club of three countries that had soft-landed on Moon but will also try to find possibilities of sustaining human life on Earth’s natural satellite with an aim to colonising it.

Nasa’s payload Moon Mineralogy Mapper and its synthetic aperture radar Mini-SAR on board Chandrayaan-1 had detected evidence of hydrogen-oxygen chemical bond when it looked at the top area of Moon’s regolith (soil). In fact, Mini-SAR had found over 40 small craters with water ice. The craters ranged from 2 to 15 km in diameter. It’s estimated there could be 1.3 trillion pounds (600 million metric tons) of water ice. Chandrayaan-1’s own moon impact probe had also detected the signature of water just before it crashlanded.

Accoding to Nasa, most of the new-found water ice lies in the shadows of craters near the poles, where the warmest temperatures never reach above -156 degrees Celsius. Isro has, therefore, chosen the south pole as Chandrayaan-2’s landing site to expand its water exploration. Vikram will attempt to soft-land in a high plain between two craters, Manzinus C and Simpelius N.

The south pole is also supposed to have ancient rocks and craters that will cast light on the history of Moon and fossil records of the earlier solar system. “Like Chandrayaan-1 found water, we are expecting that Chandrayaan-2 will find new science in the south pole,” Isro chairman K Sivan told TOI. According to Isro, Moon is a promising test-bed to demonstrate technologies required for deep-space missions.

Chandrayaan-2 is also likely to look for a large cave, whose images were captured by Chandrayaan-1 orbiter, that could serve as a settlement for future manned missions. This is because it is very difficult for humans to survive on Moon's surface due to hazardous radiation, micro-metoritic impacts, extreme temperature and dust storms. Chandrayaan-1’s stereoscope imagery suggests the cave, uncollapsed remains of an ancient lava tube, is located 160 metre below the lunar surface and is 2km long and 360 metre wide. “Such a lava tube could be a potential site for future human habitability on the moon for future human missions and scientific explorations, providing a safe environment (to humans)...,” a team of scientists led by A S Arya of Isro's Space Applications Centre had reported in its findings. In fact, such hollow structures could later be used by humans as launchpads to launch missions to other planets from Moon.

Chandrayaan-2, loaded with 13 payloads, will do a detailed study of topography, seismography, mineral identification and distribution, surface chemical composition, thermo-physical characteristics of top soil and composition of the tenuous lunar atmosphere for a new understanding of the origin and evolution of Moon.

