Chandrayaan-4: India To Launch Next Moon Mission in 2028
After the smooth and successful soft landing of Chandrayaan 3 on the moon, the Indian Research Space Organisation is all set to start a new lunar journey in the upcoming years. The news has been officially shared by one of the scientists of ISRO who said that Chandrayaan-4 will likely start the next lunar journey in 2028. Indians are quite excited to know what new task will be performed by ISRO with the help of Chandrayaan-4. While interacting with a media outlet, ISRO’s Space Applications Centre, Dr. Nilesh Desai said that the next mission of Chandrayaan-4 or the LUPEX mission will be launched in 2028.
What Are The Main Objectives of the LUPEX Mission
As per Dr Nilesh Desai, the next lunar journey of Chandrayaan-4 will focus on achieving even more ambitious goals. If this aim is successful then India will become the 4th nation to successfully bring samples from the Moon. Chandryaan-4 also called the LUPEX mission aims to build on the accomplishments of the recently finished Chandrayaan-3 mission while trying more complex objectives. The primary goal of Chandrayaan 4 is to land near the south pole of the lunar surface, where it will collect rock samples for analysis purposes.
The success of Chandrayaan-4 will not only boost the contribution of scientific knowledge but also mark a significant step toward potential human colonization of the moon. One of the most important features of Chandrayaan-4 is the introduction of a 350-kg rover that can travel farther than its predecessor. The role of the rover is to explore the uncharted rims of lunar craters which will be helpful in providing valuable data to understand the lunar surface.
According to the reports, the next lunar journey will likely use heavy-lift GSLV Mk III or LVM3 launch vehicles from India. However, this task will not be easy to do and there is a high chance that two launches will be needed. The complexity of the mission lies in the safe retrieval of samples and their return to Earth. Apart from that, ISRO is also planning to launch a new mission by 2040 but this time, the Indian Space Agency is planning to send Indians to lunar space. Nilesh Desai outlined the long-term vision of the agency and said “We have the next 15 years to send a man to the moon.”
Speaking about the future landing of Chandrayaan-4, the space agency states that the landing of the new vehicle will be similar to the previous vehicle but the central module will return to the Earth after docking with the orbiting module which will later get detached from the vehicle above Earth to re-enter the atmosphere and drop the samples which will be gather from the surface of the Moon. Earlier the Indian space agency also demonstrated a hop experiment with Vikram to present that a spacecraft could lift from the lunar surface, and the Oribter come back to Earth from the Moon which is a clear sign that a spacecraft can easily come back to the Earth. As of now, only 3 nations have achieved the goal of bringing samples from the lunar surface to Earth and we are hoping that the success of Chandrayaan-4 will help the nation to become the 4th nation to succeed in doing this but for that we need to wait.