While the Indian Space & Research Organisation plans to launch Chandrayaan-3, its predecessor that fatally crashed on the Moon is still beaming back valuable input. The Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer onboard Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter has now detected Solar Proton Events and coronal mass ejections from the Sun.
Chandrayaan-2 was launched on July 22, 2019. However, the lander Vikram hard-landed on September 7, 2019, crashed India’s dream to become the first nation to successfully land on the lunar surface in its maiden attempt. Isro had then said the mission achieved 98 per cent success as the orbiter continues to share data with the ground station.
“Recently, there were two M-class solar flares. One flare (M5.5) spewed out energetic particles into interplanetary space and the other flare (M1.5) was accompanied by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). SPE event was seen by NASA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) satellite orbiting around Earth. However, the CME event was not detected by GOES,” Isro said in a statement.
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Why did ISRO wants to go to the Moon?
The Moon is the closest cosmic body at which space discovery can be attempted and documented. It is also a promising test bed to demonstrate technologies required for deep-space missions. Chandrayaan-2 aims for enhancing our understanding of the Moon, stimulate the advancement of technology, promote global alliances and inspire a future generation of explorers and scientists.
