Bengaluru, 26 April

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has organised a national meeting on the potential aspects of lunar sample science in the context of the forthcoming Chandrayaan-4 mission, which aims at returning lunar samples back to the earth.

The meeting was attended by the lunar science community as well as scientists keen on constraining the remote sensing observations of the lunar surface with ground-truth experiments.

M Ganesh Pillai, ISRO’s scientific secretary emphasized on the meet’s significance in the context of the Chandrayaan-4 mission, fitting in the overall roadmap of India's lunar exploration programme, which would eventually lead to India's first human-spaceflight mission to the moon by 2040.

Teams from UR Rao Satellite Centre and ISRO deliberated on the plans for the lunar sample curation and analysis facilities, as well as the Chandrayaan-4 mission.

The detailed deliberations, made by scientists and academicians from several national institutions and academia, addressed the aspects of outstanding problems in lunar science, scientifically rewarding potential of lunar landing sites and advanced analysis of the returned samples.