Significant findings by Chandrayaan-2

Last Updated13/09/2021

Chandrayaan-2 was launched on 22nd July 2019 from Satish Dhawan Space Center.
Indian Space research Organisation (ISRO) has yielded discovery-class findings from the Orbiter, the part of the mission that has been functioning properly.
Earlier this week, ISRO released new information that has been gathered by the scientific payloads, which has further added to the understanding about the Moon, Sun and the mysteries of their environment.

The presence of water on the Moon has already been discovered back in 2008 by Chandrayaan-1.
But the instrument onboard the first mission to the moon was not sensitive enough to detect the difference between hydroxyl radical (OH) and the water molecule (H2O, which also has OH).
Chandrayaan-2 had a far more sensitive instrument named the Imaging Infra-Red Spectrometer (IIRS) onboard which detected OH and H2O molecules separately and further found unique characteristics about both.
IIRS also made the most precise observation about the presence of water molecules on the lunar surface to date.
Earlier, water was known to be present mainly in the polar regions of the Moon.
But, Chandrayaan-2 unravels the mystery of water by finding signatures at all latitudes on the surface of the moon.
Besides, in a first of its kind discovery, a microwave imaging instrument, the Dual Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar, has detected potential water ice at the permanently shadowed regions in Lunar Poles.

Chandra’s Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) detector examined and detected minor elements – chromium and manganese for the first time.
The findings pave the path for adding knowledge about the magmatic evolution of the Moon, its nebular conditions and much more.

Besides gathering information about the Lunar surface, one of the scientific payloads has collected information about Solar flares.
Solar X-ray Monitor (XSM) has witnessed a huge amount of microflares outside the active regions of the Sun for the first time.
ISRO believes that this discovery will lead to a better understanding of the mechanism behind the heating of the solar corona, which has been the centre of attraction and a problem for many decades.

The exploration of the moon and to the moon is not limited to today.
Scientists are in a quest to understand the lunar surface to pave the path for future Moon missions.
Hence, the information gathered from the Orbiter built upon the existing database about Moon.
The future scope of the work depends on four key aspects:

The information about the Permanently Shadowed Surface of the Lunar will aid scientists to zero in on future landing sites, further helping in man missions.
Artemis Mission of NASA also plans to enable human landing on the Lunar surface by 2024 will take the help of ISRO’s data.