ISRO invites proposals from scientific community to analyse Chandrayaan-3 lander, rover data

Bengaluru: The ISRO on Monday issued Announcement of Opportunity (AO) inviting scientific community to participate in the analysis and utilisation of data from experiments of Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover, launched on July 14, 2023 to carry out in-situ studies on Moon.

The Bengaluru-based space agency seeks proposals from faculty and researchers from recognised academia, research institutions, universities, colleges and government organisations of India.

The deadline for submission of proposals is October 21.

According to a press release issued by ISRO, the Chandrayaan-3 mission objectives were successfully accomplished and the payloads collected data pertaining to seismicity, thermo-physical properties, plasma environment and elemental composition of the landing region for one lunar day.

“The payload teams analysed the datasets and published them in reputed peer-reviewed journals. The science data have been peer-reviewed by domain experts and released to the public on August 23, 2024,” said the release.

Now, ISRO seeks innovative research proposals that understand the capability of the payload with respect to intended science.

ISRO said the data from Chandrayaan-1 and Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter have been extensively used by Indian researchers to understand lunar surface and sub-surface, composition (elemental and mineralogy) and exosphere.

“These studies have provided enhanced thoughtful views regarding lunar evolutionary processes. ISRO expanded the science community by releasing data utilisation AO and currently 30 projects are running in various academic institutions,” it added.

Chandrayaan-3 Lander and Rover payloads data are made open to the public and scientific proposals are solicited for scientific analysis. This can be accessed at PRADAN portal of Indian Space Science Data Centre (ISSDC) at pradan.issdc.gov.in.