Report on the Loss of Vikram Lander of Chandrayaan 2 Mission

India attempted its first-ever science lander mission on 22 July 2019 with the launch of GSLV. This mission is considered to be the first-ever landing mission to the Lunar South Pole Region, that unfortunately lost communication prior to landing at 2.1 km above the lunar surface. The communication issue encountered during the rough breaking of landing phase at 20:23 UTC on 6 September 2019. Subsequent attempt to reestablish the communication from the lander remained unsuccessful. To date, ISRO has not revealed the failure cause behind the failure of Chandrayaan 2 lander “Vikram” along with its micro-rover “Pragyaan”. In this paper, we interpreted some possible causes responsible for the loss of lander and its mishap.

Machine Learning applied to Lunar Data to Characterize Potential Sites for Future Science, Mobile Exploration, Utilization, lunar Bases and Moon Villages.

<p>The lunar south pole is of particular interest to researchers because of its unique geographical features. It contains craters where the near-constant sunlight does not reach the interior. These craters are of enormous importance in the process of human exploration of the moon.This research aims to develop an identification algorithm applied to LROC data to characterize and identify potential regions of interest on the lunar south pole. Such areas of interest include (surroundings of) lava tubes, skylights, crater detection for age estimation, and planning traverses for the Artemis successive missions.Identifying these regions will be done using machine learning techniques such as a deep convolutional neural network that will be trained on labeled data and are then used to identify and characterize new regions of interest.</p>

VOILA on LUVMI-X: A LIBS Instrument for the Detection of Volatiles at the Lunar South Pole

<p>The lunar south pole is of great interest for upcoming lunar exploration endeavors due to the detection of large reservoirs of water ice in the pole’s permanently shadowed regions [1], which could be utilized to reduce the costs of a sustained presence on the Moon [2]. A strong focus of future robotic exploration missions will therefore be on the detection of water and related volatiles. For this purpose, the project Lunar Volatiles Mobile Instrumentation – Extended (LUVMI-X) is developing an initial system design as well as payload and mobility breadboards for a small, lightweight rover [3]. One of the proposed payloads is the Volatiles Identification by Laser Analysis instrument (VOILA), which uses laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to analyze the elemental composition of the lunar surface with an emphasis on the detection of hydrogen for the inference of the presence of water. VOILA is a joint project by OHB System AG, Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V., and the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Optical Sensor Systems. It is designed to analyze targets on the lunar surface in front of the LUVMI-X rover at a variable focus between 300 mm to 500 mm, allowing for precise measurements under various measurement conditions. The spectrometer covers the wavelength range from 350 nm to 790 nm, which includes the hydrogen line at 656.3 nm as well as spectral lines of most major rock-forming elements. The breadboard laboratory setup for VOILA was recently completed and first measurements of Moon-relevant samples have been made. Here, we will show the results of these measurements and will discuss their meaning for the further improvement of the instrument design and for its potential use as a volatile-scouting instrument at the lunar south pole.</p><p>[1] Li S. et al. (2018) PNAS, 36, 8907–8912. [2] Anand M. et al. (2012) Planet. Space Sci., 74, 42–48. [3] Gancet J. et al. (2019) ASTRA 2019. [4] Knight A. K. et al. (2000) Appl. Spectrosc., 54, 331–340. [5] Maurice S. et al. (2012) Space Sci. Rev., 170, 95–166. [6] Wiens R. C. et al. (2012) Space Sci. Rev., 170, 167–227. [7] Wiens R. C. et al. (2017) Spectroscopy, 32. [8] Ren X. et al. (2018) EPSC 2018, Abstract EPSC2018-759. [9] Laxmiprasad A. S. et al. (2013) Adv. Space Res., 52, 332–341. [10] Lasue J. et al. (2012) J. Geophys. Res., 117, E1.</p>