New Delhi: ISRO was provided communications support for its Chandrayaan 3 mission by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency), through the use of their global networks of dish antennas for radio communications. ISRO used the ground station at Byalalu near Bengaluru, NASA’s ground stations at Goldstone, Canberra and Madrid, and ESA’s stations at Kourou and Goonhilly. Despite this global support, ISRO could not operate all its payloads at maximum capacity because of visibility gaps. ESA plans to address this gap by deploying its Moonlight constellation for providing navigation and communications services on the lunar surface.
There is no GPS on the Moon…. yet. (Image Credit: ESA).
At IAC 2024, P Veeramuthuvel, Project Director of the Chandrayaan 3 mission said, “Even though for Chandrayaan 3, we utilised different DSN apart from IDSN from ISRO, we have utilised JPL three stations and ESA two stations, but still we were having a visibility gap. These stations are very important, we are also looking forward to another station which is coming up in a geographically separated zone, so that we will have a good coverage. In addition to that, we also have IDRSS satellite coming up which is a relay satellite, which will be utilised for our Gaganyaan programme. So, in order to maximise the payload operations, this is also very crucial. So now the Moonlight is there and we are thinking of having some more relay satellites for communications with highly elliptical orbits, with two inclinations. ”
The need for deploying lunar infrastructure
ISRO also intends to deploy its own constellation along similar lines, with the orbits oriented towards the south pole of the Moon, which is the target for future missions by all major spacefaring nations. ISRO will be returning to the Moon with the Chandrayaan 4 sample return mission, followed by the Chandrayaan 5/LUPEX collaboration with JAXA to demonstrate pinpoint precision in landing. These missions will be followed up by at least two more Chandrayaan missions aimed at using the locally sourced regolith to produce suitable ink for additive manufacturing on the lunar surface, and to demonstrate a nuclear heat source. The Chandrayaan programme will allow ISRO to develop the capabilities for landing an Indian on the Moon by 2040.
