ISRO identifies site for Chandrayaan-4 lander

The Chandrayaan-4 Mission is at least two years away, but the ISRO has identified a location in the South Polar region of the 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 a one km by one km area around MM-4 contains “the least hazardous percentage, mean slope of 5 degrees, a mean height of 5,334 metres and the largest 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.