Chandrayaan-2 will look for water, cave for future dwelling

SRIHARIKOTA: Chandrayaan-2 will not only attempt to take India to 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.
Chandrayaan-1’s moon impact probe had detected signature of water. More convincingly, Nasa’s payload Moon Mineralogy Mapper and its synthetic aperture radar Mini-SAR on board Chandrayaan-1 found evidence of hydrogen-oxygen chemical bond when it looked at the top area of the lunar soil. Mini-SAR had found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The diameter of the craters ranged from 2km to 15km. Scientists believe there could be 600 million metric tonnes of water ice on Moon.
Nasa says most of water ice lies in the shadows of craters near the poles, where the warmest temperatures never cross minus 156 degrees Celsius. Isro has chosen the south pole as Chandrayaan-2’s landing site to expand its water exploration. Vikram, the lander, will attempt to soft-land on 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 more things on the south pole,” Isro chairman K Sivan told TOI. According to Isro, Moon is a promising testbed 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 base for future manned missions. This is because it is very difficult for humans to survive on Moon’s surface due to hazardous radiation, micro-meteoritic impacts, extreme temperature and dust storms. Chandrayaan-1’s stereoscope imagery suggests the cave is made of remnants of an ancient lava tube located 160m below the lunar surface, 2km long and 360m 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.
Chandrayaan-2, loaded with 13 payloads, will do a detailed study of the topography, seismography, mineral identification and distribution, surface chemical composition, thermophysical characteristics of top soil and composition of the tenuous lunar atmosphere for a new understanding of the origin and evolution of Moon.