Chandrayaan-2 Mission : Initial Data Release

Dec 25, 2020

Sriharikota, India: India’s second mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-2 was launched on 22nd July 2019 from Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota. The Orbiter which was injected into a lunar orbit on 2nd Sept 2019, carries 8 experiments to address many open questions on lunar science. All experiments have been performing well and the data received, suggests excellent capability to deliver on the pre-launch promises.

In the period since launch payload teams tuned onboard systems for optimal instrument configurations, derived essential in-flight calibration data, revised / updated data processing steps / software and have started to publish early results.

Today, the first set of data are being released for all users. The public release data archived at the Indian Space Science Data Center in Bylalu, near Bengaluru is prepared in the standard, globally followed Planetary Data System 4 (PDS4) format for public release.

Indian Space Science Data Center (ISSDC) is the nodal center of planetary data archive for planetary missions of ISRO. The Chandrayaan-2 data are required to be in Planetary Data Sysytem-4 (PDS4) standard and required to be peer reviewed scientifically and technically before acceptance as PDS archives and declared ready for sharing with global scientific community and general public.

This activity has been completed and hence the first set of data from the Chandrayaan-2 mission are now being released for wider public use through the PRADAN portal hosted by ISSDC. Users may also visit https://www.issdc.gov.in for more information about mission.

ISRO Science Data Archive (ISDA) currently holds data sets acquired by Chandrayaan-2 payloads from Sep-2019 to Feb-2020 from seven instruments. Data sets from IIRS payload will be added to this shortly. This release has Level-0 and Level-1 basic data sets prepared using Planetary Data System (PDS) version 4 standards.

Courtesy: MoonDaily