India to soft land rover on moon: ISRO scientists

Ongole: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is ready to soft land a rover on the moon with the Chandrayaan-2 mission in March 2018. The ISRO scientists revealed that the space organisation was getting proposals from private organisations across the globe for joint ventures, after the successful launching of 104 satellites into the orbit in a single mission.

V Kumbakarnan, Project Director of Second Vehicle Assembly Building, SDSC SHAR, G Ramesh Babu, General Manager of SDSC SHAR and other scientists from the ISRO spoke to The Hans India in Ongole on Sunday. They said, “The ISRO is ready to launch PSLV C40 in December and GSLV Mark IV later. We are almost ready to launch the Chandrayaan-2 mission by March 2018 to study the planetary satellite”.

Kumbakarnan said that ISRO was receiving offers from private organisations for collaboration. At this moment, there were discussions in the pipeline with a private organisation and an MoU was possible after launching the joint vehicle.

Once the deal was fixed, the private organisation makes the satellites and ISRO would launch them into the orbit, he added Responding to a query about the said objection of ISRO to the construction of Dugarajapatnam port, the scientists said, “ISRO didn’t object to the proposal for constructing a port at Dugarajapatnam. But if the port is constructed, it should shut down the operations for 2 to 3 hours at the time of launching a mission.”