BENGALURU: Even as both the countries continue to battle Covid-19 pandemic, Japan, which will be launching a joint lunar mission with India — Lunar Polar Exploration (LPE) — that hopes to put a lander and rover on Moon’s surface has, for the first time, spelled out details of the project that will see Isro lead the lander development.
As per details shared by Japanese space agency JAXA, the mission will be launched after 2023 — Isro currently has its human spaceflight programme (Gaganyaan) scheduled for 2022 — and will involve a lander and a rover. JAXA diagrams show that the Japanese would be building the overall landing module and the rover, while Isro would develop the lander system.
The mission will be launched from Japan, and the designated launch vehicle is the H3 rocket, manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
The first thinking of this mission was made public in 2017, during a multi-space agencies’ meeting in Bengaluru and it was then also part of the inter-governmental discussions during PM Modi’s visit to Japan in 2018. TOI had reported in September 2019, that the project had since moved forward and both agencies were keen on landing on Moon together.
Now, a pre-project team established earlier this year is working on developing a comprehensive management plan for the collaborative mission; investigate the spacecraft