Bengaluru: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday informed that it will be releasing science data from Chandrayaan-2 for public and global use from October, as reported by news agency IANS.
The report on the major findings from Chandrayaan-2’s science experiments was planned to be released at the Annual Lunar Planetary Science Conference in March. However, it got cancelled due to COVID-19.
All eight payloads on Chandrayaan-2 are performing well. The global mapping of lunar surface and polar coverage are being carried out as per the mission plan, ISRO informed.
ISRO, according to the report, explained about about extensive data acquired from Chandrayaan-2 payloads and derivation of following parameters till date:
– presence of water-ice in the polar regions
– X-ray based and infrared spectroscopic mineral information
– mid-latitude and high-latitude presence of Argon-40 gas
(Argon-40 is a condensable gas on the moon which gets released internally by the radio-active decay).
ISRO added that Tuesday marked an year of the launch of India’s second moon mission by a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV)-MkIII-M1.
According to the report, the GSLV rocket, nicknamed ‘Bahubali’, blasted off from the second launch pad at India’s rocket port in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, on July 22, 2019.
The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft was inserted into lunar orbit on August 20, 2019.