Chandrayaan-2 orbiter payloads made discovery-class findings, says ISRO

The observations of the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter payloads have yielded discovery-class findings, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

There were eight scientific payloads hosted on the orbiter craft. They are: Chandrayaan-2 Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS), Solar X-ray Monitor (XSM), CHandra’s Atmospheric Compositional Explorer 2 (CHACE 2), Dual Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (DFSAR), Imaging Infra-Red Spectrometer (IIRS), Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC 2), Orbiter High Resolution Camera (OHRC), and Dual Frequency Radio Science (DFRS) experiment.

The workshop commemorated the completion of two years of the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter in the lunar orbit. The events were conducted in virtual mode. ISRO Chairman and Secretary in the Department of Space (DoS) K Sivan inaugurated the workshop and released the documents on Chandrayaan-2 science results and data products for utilisation by the scientific community.

The discovery of Chromium and Manganese on lunar surface, which are available in trace quantities, by CLASS payload was announced. The observations of microflares of Sun, during quiet-Sun period, were made by the XSM payload.

The first-ever unambiguous detection of hydration features of Moon was achieved by Chandrayaan-2 with its infra-red spectrometer payload IIRS, which captured clear signatures of Hydroxyl and water-ice on lunar surface. “The observations have been yielding intriguing scientific results, which are being published in peer-reviewed journals and presented in international meetings,” Sivan said.

The workshop commemorated completion of two years of the Chandrayaan-2 in the lunar orbit