ISRO releases Chandrayaan-2 data; hails its 'excellent capability to deliver on promises'

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday released the first set of data from the country's second mission to the Moon, the Chandrayaan-2, for the general public. Chandrayaan-2 was launched on July 22 last year from Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota, in Andhra Pradesh.

'Excellent capability to deliver on pre-launch promises'

The Orbiter which was injected into a lunar orbit on September 2, 2019, carries eight experiments to address many open questions on lunar science. "All experiments have been performing well and the data received suggests the excellent capability to deliver on the pre-launch promises," ISRO said.

In the period since the launch, payload teams tuned on-board systems for optimal instrument configurations, derived essential in-flight calibration data, revised/updated data processing steps/software and have started to publish early results, it said. On Thursday the first set of data was being released for all users, the ISRO further said.

"The public release data archived at the Indian Space Science Data Centre in Bylalu, near Bengaluru is prepared in the standard, globally followed Planetary Data System 4 (PDS4) format for public release," it added.

The Indian Space Science Data Centre (ISSDC) is the nodal centre of the planetary data archive for the planetary missions of ISRO. "The Chandrayaan-2 data is required to be in the Planetary Data System-4 (PDS4) standard, and is required to be peer-reviewed scientifically and technically before acceptance as PDS archives and declared ready for sharing with the global scientific community and the general public," ISRO said. 

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This activity has been completed and hence the first set of data from the Chandrayaan-2 mission is now being released for the wider public use through the PRADAN portal hosted by ISSDC. The ISRO Science Data Archive (ISDA) currently holds data sets acquired by Chandrayaan-2 payloads from September-2019 to February-2020 from seven instruments.

Data sets from the Imaging Infra-Red Spectrometer (IIRS) payload will be added to this shortly, it said, adding that this release has Level-0 and Level-1 basic data sets prepared using Planetary Data System (PDS) version 4 standards.

The Chandrayaan-2 mission was India's first attempt to land on the lunar surface. ISRO had planned the landing on the South Pole region of the lunar surface. However, the lander Vikram hard-landed in September last year. Its orbiter, which is still in the lunar orbit, has a mission life of seven years. ISRO Chairman K Sivan had recently said that the work on the Chandrayaan-3 mission, comprising a lander and a rover, was in progress. "We have not yet fixed the schedule (for the Chandrayaan-3 launch)," he had said.

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(With PTI inputs)