Isro identifies site on Moon for Chandrayaan-4 lander

BENGALURU: The Chandrayaan-4 Mission is at least two years away, but the Isro has identified a location in the South Polar region of Moon to land its lander.

The union government has approved the Chandrayaan-4 mission, designed as a lunar sample-return mission and it will be India’s most complex lunar endeavour yet.

"We are targeting 2028 for Chandrayaan-4," Isro chairman V Narayanan had earlier said.

According to Isro officials, they had zeroed in on four sites of the Mons Mouton (MM) and found one of them suitable for landing on the lunar surface.

Mons Mouton is a region on the Moon.

Officials said they had identified locations -- MM-1, MM-3, MM-4 and MM-5. Of them, MM-4 was chosen for the landing.

"The four sites in Mons Mouton area were fully characterised with respect to terrain characteristics using high resolution Orbiter High Resolution Camera (OHRC) multi view image datasets," they said.

It was found that one kilometre by one kilometre area around MM-4 contains "the less hazard percentage, mean slope of 5 degrees, mean height of 5334 metres and most number of hazard free grids of size 24 metres into 24 metres. Hence, MM-4 could be considered as the potential site of Chandrayaan-4 mission," officials said.

Chandrayaan-4 consists of a propulsion module (PM), a Descender module (DM), an Ascender Module (AM), a Transfer module (TM) and a Re-entry Module (RM).

The DM and AM combined stack will soft land on moon surface at the designated site.

The main soft landing will be done by an appropriate stack (AM+DM) descent trajectory with navigation, guidance and control system while the safe landing can be ensured by a proper selection of the landing site that meets all the constraints of the Lander.