Lunar Polar Exploration (LUPEX) Mission

Gautam

Gautam

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*Edit* Mission officially named LUPEX. Changed the name of the thread.

Alright, we got more news about the Chandrayaan-3 straight from the horse's mouth. Not ISRO chief Dr. K. Sivan, the other horse, Dr. Masaki Fujimoto, Ph.D. Professor of Space Plasma Physics at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, JAXA. Dr. Fujimoto is the lead scientist working for JAXA in the lunar exploration scene.

First, some background :

When it was first reported it was said to be a joint lunar sample return mission :
India, Japan working on lunar sample return mission

JAXA had given this mission the interim name of SELENE-R(R probably stands for rover, if you recall the JAXA SELENE mission was a lunar orbiter). The plan called for ISRO providing the lander(presumably a version of the Vikram Lander) while the launcher would be the JAXA H-IIB or the H-III launcher(depending on final weight of the spacecraft). The rover would be jointly designed and would have a lot of international instruments(mostly from NASA, CNES).

Here you can see Dr. Fujimoto talk about a lot of JAXA missions including the ISRO-JAXA joint SELENE-R mission :
Episode 82: Jaxa and International Collaboration with Professor Fujimoto Masaki - AstrotalkUK

Timeline for the mission is mentioned to be early 2020s. Which fits in nicely with our Space Science Missions Roadmap: 2008 to 2028 as unveiled by Dr. K. Sivan in September 2018. Notice the lunar polar exploration 2024, that's probably the one.
1564142660246.png


Curiously, Dr. Fujimoto doesn't mention anything about sample return. He talked about landing near the polar region(probably the south pole) of moon and doing experiment on the surface and on ice. The Japanese are planning future moon base on the south pole of moon and they probably want international partners. ISRO is a candidate.

Was the sample return taken off the table though ? That would be a bummer.:(

Here is a recent video of Dr. Fujimoto where he talks about the SELENE-R, and talks about the mission SLIM and how its connected to SELENE-R(3:00 to 7:00) :

SLIM's precise landing capability will be used by the ISRO on the SELENE-R lander. He explicitly mentions demonstrating overnight survival, a crucial ability that the CY-2 doesn't have(or at least not advertised, we will know soon).

As of 2019 the roles and responsibilities of the mission has been clearly defined as follows :

Launcher : JAXA
Rover : JAXA(not a jv with ISRO) with several international(including Indian) payloads.
Lander : ISRO
Operations Support Network : Indian and American DSNs.

Here is the proposed model of SELENE-R/Chandrayaan-3. You can see the lander with multiple fuel tanks and a 3-fold ramp. The rover will actually have a driller of some kind to dig into lunar soil and find water. Then bake water(with microwave maybe) to find the constituents. Had a lot of fun looking for this in Japanese govt. websites.:p
Screenshot (334).png


Still nobody seems to clarify on the sample return part. Is it off the table ? My take is maybe yes, maybe no. Let me explain :

Since the lander is ISRO's responsibility and sample return always depends on the lander. Whether the mission carries out a return is effectively ISRO's prerogative. The payload carried by the lander is, as JAXA puts it, "several hundred kilograms" in weight. For reference the ISRO's Pragyan rover weighs around a mere 27 kg. So the lander must be much heavier than the fully loaded Vikram and much larger too. As such it has enough space of incorporating a service module for return mission.

Remember the start up "Team Indus". Well they are still on about their moon rover mission. More importantly they recently announced they want to do a sample return from moon.

https://twitter.com/x/status/793795022579695617

https://twitter.com/x/status/793794922730008576

I hear the Chinese are also planning a sample return. I doubt ISRO will just sit there and let them. Just my two cents.
 
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Gautam said:
Alright, we got more news about the Chandrayaan-3 straight from the horse's mouth. Not ISRO chief Dr. K. Sivan, the other horse, Dr. Masaki Fujimoto, Ph.D. Professor of Space Plasma Physics at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, JAXA. Dr. Fujimoto is the lead scientist working for JAXA in the lunar exploration scene.

First, some background :

When it was first reported it was said to be a joint lunar sample return mission :
India, Japan working on lunar sample return mission

JAXA had given this mission the interim name of SELENE-R(R probably stands for rover, if you recall the JAXA SELENE mission was a lunar orbiter). The plan called for ISRO providing the lander(presumably a version of the Vikram Lander) while the launcher would be the JAXA H-IIB or the H-III launcher(depending on final weight of the spacecraft). The rover would be jointly designed and would have a lot of international instruments(mostly from NASA, CNES).

Here you can see Dr. Fujimoto talk about a lot of JAXA missions including the ISRO-JAXA joint SELENE-R mission :
Episode 82: Jaxa and International Collaboration with Professor Fujimoto Masaki - AstrotalkUK

Timeline for the mission is mentioned to be early 2020s. Which fits in nicely with our Space Science Missions Roadmap: 2008 to 2028 as unveiled by Dr. K. Sivan in September 2018. Notice the lunar polar exploration 2024, that's probably the one.
View attachment 8430

Curiously, Dr. Fujimoto doesn't mention anything about sample return. He talked about landing near the polar region(probably the south pole) of moon and doing experiment on the surface and on ice. The Japanese are planning future moon base on the south pole of moon and they probably want international partners. ISRO is a candidate.

Was the sample return taken off the table though ? That would be a bummer.:(

Here is a recent video of Dr. Fujimoto where he talks about the SELENE-R, and talks about the mission SLIM and how its connected to SELENE-R(3:00 to 7:00) :

SLIM's precise landing capability will be used by the ISRO on the SELENE-R lander. He explicitly mentions demonstrating overnight survival, a crucial ability that the CY-2 doesn't have(or at least not advertised, we will know soon).

As of 2019 the roles and responsibilities of the mission has been clearly defined as follows :

Launcher : JAXA
Rover : JAXA(not a jv with ISRO) with several international(including Indian) payloads.
Lander : ISRO
Operations Support Network : Indian and American DSNs.

Here is the proposed model of SELENE-R/Chandrayaan-3. You can see the lander with multiple fuel tanks and a 3-fold ramp. The rover will actually have a driller of some kind to dig into lunar soil and find water. Then bake water(with microwave maybe) to find the constituents. Had a lot of fun looking for this in Japanese govt. websites.:p
View attachment 8431

Still nobody seems to clarify on the sample return part. Is it off the table ? My take is maybe yes, maybe no. Let me explain :

Since the lander is ISRO's responsibility and sample return always depends on the lander. Whether the mission carries out a return is effectively ISRO's prerogative. The payload carried by the lander is, as JAXA puts it, "several hundred kilograms" in weight. For reference the ISRO's Pragyan rover weighs around a mere 27 kg. So the lander must be much heavier than the fully loaded Vikram and much larger too. As such it has enough space of incorporating a service module for return mission.

Remember the start up "Team Indus". Well they are still on about their moon rover mission. More importantly they recently announced they want to do a sample return from moon.

https://twitter.com/x/status/793795022579695617

https://twitter.com/x/status/793794922730008576

I hear the Chinese are also planning a sample return. I doubt ISRO will just sit there and let them. Just my two cents.
Click to expand...

Alright. ladies and gentlemen things just got official. Japanese PM Shinzo Abe just gave his approval to prioritize the Chandrayaan-3/SELENE-R mission over some other JAXA missions.

From the Japanese media :

Japan, India to team up in race to discover water on moon

The Yomiuri Shimbun
7:44 pm, July 30, 2019

The government has decided to join forces with India in the race to discover water on the moon, with the two countries planning to try to land an unmanned rover on the moon’s south pole as early as fiscal 2023.

Frozen water is believed to exist inside craters and other areas of the moon’s poles where sunlight does not reach. The government plans to use the rover to excavate in such areas and discover water on the moon for the first time. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) have already held meetings on the project, and Japan’s Committee on National Space Policy and other bodies are set to begin discussions before making an official announcement.

The government’s Strategic Headquarters for National Space Policy, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, decided last month to make the Japan-India lunar mission a priority item on the schedule of its Basic Plan on Space Policy when it is revised at the end of this year.

Japan will be in charge of launching the rocket and developing a lunar rover, while India will develop a lander for the mission.

Japan’s H3 launch vehicle, which is under development, will send the rover-loaded lander to the moon sometime around fiscal 2023. The lander is expected to touch down on the moon’s south pole, where water likely exists. The rover will then explore an area 500 meters square to try to detect water using onboard analysis equipment.

On July 22, India launched the unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-2 in an effort to land in the vicinity of the moon’s south pole. Japan, meanwhile, plans to launch its own lander, SLIM, in fiscal 2021 to make a pinpoint landing on the moon’s surface. The government decided that integrating the results of these projects would give the two countries the lead in the race to discover lunar water.

The moon has a radius of about 1,700 kilometers, or about one-fourth the radius of the Earth. A series of recent uncrewed probes conducted by India and the United States have revealed that water is highly likely to exist on the moon’s north and south poles in the form of ice. However, a water sample has not yet been collected. Besides providing drinking water, the hydrogen and oxygen extracted from lunar water could be used to fuel rockets, transforming the moon into a base for man’s future development of space.

As a result, many countries are joining the race to explore the moon’s poles. The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is trying to send astronauts to the moon’s south pole by 2024 under its Artemis lunar exploration program, which would mark the first manned moon landings since the historic Apollo missions. China is also aiming to land an uncrewed probe on a lunar pole and bring moon rocks back to Earth in 2020 or later.

“We want to get ahead of the world in confirming the presence of water on the moon,” said Takeshi Hoshino, a principal engineer at JAXA. “Finding water on the moon would lead to broadening the range of activity for humankind and make lunar exploration more active than ever.”

Japan, India to team up in race to discover water on moon

The prioritization was done to seal the place of both the nations in the race to confirm the presence of water on the lunar south pole(and thus the presence of water on moon). If you recall, it was Chandrayaan-1 that discovered the presence of water on moon, however that was just a orbiter which used the debris from the impact probe to find water on moon. Nobody has confirmed it yet by using a rover, so the race is still on.

It is because of this race that both ISRO and JAXA are taking some huge risks. For example, the rocket used will be the JAXA's H-3 which is still under development and hasn't flown once yet. So there are no guarantees of reliability. The Japanese are focusing their efforts on the rover which they state will be capable of surviving the freezing lunar night and pinning their hopes on us to make a far more capable lander.

Also it seems the sample rerun is off the table and the launch will be on 2023, not 2024 as I previously posted. There seems to another wholly Indian lunar project ISRO has in 2024. Nothing on that yet, maybe that will be our sample return mission.

Speculations aside this is a serious engineering effort and now with PM Shinzo's approval it very much official. PM Shinzo Abe might get to invite Modi to Japan for witnessing the launch. Serous diplomatic brownie points to be won and Modi being the drama queen that he is will most certainly oblige.

If anybody can read Japanese, here is an old JAXA lunar exploration plan(from 2014) : http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/j/researchers/symp/sss14/paper/S2-008.pdf

Mods, can you guys make a thread for the Chandrayaan-3/SELENE-R mission, like we have for Chandrayaan-2, and move these two posts there. I would've done so myself but I can't move the post I quoted(post #557 page no 28) to the new thread. That would serve as an important background. Thanks.
@Ashwin @nair
 
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NASA's planning a manned mission to the moon in 2024, so it makes sense to launch our rover in 2023 instead, or it will take away the shine from the project. Not to mention, discoveries from the 2023 mission will also help NASA.
 
Land rove and return with samples should be the next goal to cover all aspects and match with China's phaseII of moon mission.
 
GSLV mk3 isnt enough for this kind of mission. We need something to the scale of 8000kg to GTO for an heavy lander and return mission. There is already some inside words coming out that 4000 kg wasnt enough to Chandrayaan 2 and lander/rover weight had to reduces to accomodate the vehicle's weight and size requirements.

Need to develop ULV asap. Even future human missions when become research intensive needs a better capsule with emergency capsules as such.
 
Why call it Chandrayaan 3 when its mostly , except the lander, Japanese tech. Chandrayaan should be reserved for our own missions. However there is lot to learn from JAXA, esp in the light of the stupendous acheivements of the Hayabusa 2 mission.
 
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S. A. T. A said:
Why call it Chandrayaan 3 when its mostly , except the lander, Japanese tech. Chandrayaan should be reserved for our own missions. However there is lot to learn from JAXA, esp in the light of the stupendous acheivements of the Hayabusa 2 mission.
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Nothing is final yet. Name of project, goals, funding nothing is absolutely final. What we have is a tentative plan. Let's see what comes off from it.
 
Gautam said:
Sure. But pride alone isn't what we are persuing a space program. If anything science and technology should be the primary driver, pride should be a side effect not the goal.
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Sure. But also we are in a war of civilizations. And maybe because of the 'collaboration mentality' today we cant produce a single chip. Such things are not good in long term for a country.
 
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shaxm said:
Sure. But also we are in a war of civilizations. And maybe because of the 'collaboration mentality' today we cant produce a single chip. Such things are not good in long term for a country.
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Collaborations aren't bad at all as long as collaborations aren't the only thing being done. We would send more probes to moon with or without Japan. We've sent them alone so far. A collaboration with the Japanese opens a new avenue of science, but collaborations aren't the main course or the only course we are taking. As such I don't see the problem with one joint project, its not like we are shutting down ISRO tomorrow.

As for electronic chips, we do make a fair quantity of them in India and the numbers will increase in the future. What we don't make is commercial grade state-of-the-art chips. Other than that most our military chips and satellite infra. are designed and built in country. There has been some steady pogress in chip design in India recently. It doesn't put us in the commercial league yet but its not as bad as you project. Take a look at this thread(post #4 onwards) I have posted quite a lot about them :

India Gearing Up for Big Supercomputing Expansion
 
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shaxm said:
Sure. But also we are in a war of civilizations. And maybe because of the 'collaboration mentality' today we cant produce a single chip. Such things are not good in long term for a country.
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What makes you suggest "we cant produce a single chip" ?? We have been making chips for different applications since decades.
 
The Japanese have invited the Americans to be a part of this project :

The leaders highlighted NASA’s participation in JAXA’s SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon) mission and discussions regarding NASA’s potential participation in the planned JAXA-Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Lunar Polar Exploration mission, as well as JAXA’s sharing of acquired observational data from those missions to contribute to NASA’s lunar exploration goals and objectives.
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Source : JAXA | Joint Statement on Cooperation in Lunar Exploration
 
screambowl said:
pata chal gayi humey humari aukaad.
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We are a late comer to the space exploration, this was to be expected. Remind me, how may attempts it took for the Americans/Russians to do a successful lunar landing ? If one failure is enough to put us down and out, then maybe we ought to re-consider doing space launches all together. As we move towards manned missions the price of failure will exponentially increase, if we can't stomach one crash landing of a robot this is where we should stop.

Besides relying on foreign stuff until we develop our own seems to be the plan with many things. Similar to the ISRO relying on Russian cryo upper stage until we made our own. You already know this stuff, its nothing new, and I admire you for criticising the govt./ISRO/IAF etc.. Its necessary to criticise our own, though this "aukaad" seems a bit too much.
 
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Gautam said:
Remind me, how may attempts it took for the Americans/Russians to do a successful lunar landing ?
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I agree to it but they did attempt when there was no computer, and a with an analogous computer which was 10 times slower than our smartphone.

Chinese have failed to send a probe to Mars but they will silently try to get the technology from here and there and call it their mission.

I am not saying we can't land, but PMO is angry with the ISRO for sure ( they will not sanction budgets) and this halla gulla of JointVenture must not happen. Silently get the technology and launch it. Other wise Chinese will propagate it to lower our standards.

It's only a warning.
 
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