ISRO gets patent for manufacturing Moon Soil – Burning Issues – Free PDF Download

• Introduction Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has obtained the patent for its extraordinary process of manufacturing artificial Moon Soil on Earth.

ISRO procures patent for producing Moon Soil on Earth

• Gaining the patent was amongst the few essential things required to begin with producing Regolith on Earth.
•  All the required procedures have been fulfilled to start with the process of creating and producing the lunar soil simulant.
•  ISRO has also found all the necessary factors such as mineralogy, grain size distribution, bulk chemistry and geo-mechanical properties, as per the patent application.

Moon Surface

• The surface of the Moon has two hemispheres with rather asymmetric properties.
• As a consequence the nature of the Lunar surface that we can see from the Earth is substantially different from the surface that is always hidden from the Earth. So we can classified into two types Near Side Far Side

Near Side

•  The face of the Moon turned toward us is termed the near side It is divided into light areas and the dark area
• Even, when we look at the Moon with the naked eye, it can be seen that there are bright and dark areas on its surface.
• Light areas are called the Lunar Highlands
•  The darker areas are called Maria.

Maria or Mara (Singular of Maria)

•  The word ‘Maria’ means “seas”. The Maria are lower in altitude than the Highlands . The dark material filling the Maria is actually dark because of solidified lava from earlier periods of Lunar volcanism. Both the Maria and the Highlands exhibit large craters that are the result of meteor impacts. There are many more such impact craters in the Highlands.

Far Side

•  The side of the Moon unseen from the Earth is called the far side. One of the discoveries of the first Lunar orbiters is that the far side has a very different appearance than the near side. In particular, there are almost no Maria on the far side
• The reports revealed that Moon’s surface comprises 80 per cent of ‘Highlands’ which are the treacherous areas on the surface of the moon with craters, cavities and mountains.

India and Far Side

•  With Chandrayaan-2 mission, ISRO objective was to land on the lunar South Pole
• However, India lost contact with the Lander (Vikram) and Rover (Pragyan) just few Kms before the surface of the moon

Why South Pole or the Far region?

• The Lunar South pole is especially interesting because of the lunar surface area that remains in shadow is much larger than that at the North Pole.
•  There could be a possibility of presence of water in permanently shadowed areas around it.
• In addition, South Pole region has craters that are cold traps and contain a fossil record of the early Solar System.

Story behind Patenting of Moon soil

•  More than a decade ago, even as the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter mission of 2008 was being readied
• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) created a proto-Lunar Terrain Test Facility (LTTF) at its advanced satellite testing unit, ISITE, in Bengaluru.
• This, it did, by modifying a balloon research lab, about 30-40 m high, long and wide.
• At the time, ISRO was grappling with the task of indigenously executing the cryogenic stage for its GSLV MkII rocket.
• Sending a moon lander was a distant dream of low priority. However to realise that dream, equipping the LTTF and making it look and feel like being on the moon was the first challenge. It needed lunar ‘soil’ with almost all its features and texture, lunar temperatures, low gravity and the same amount of sunlight as on the moon.

Options with ISRO

•  For recreating the terrain, an option was to import simulated lunar soil from the U.S. — at an exorbitant $150 a kg (the then prevailing price). The facility needed about 60-70 tonnes of soil.
• ISITE’s parent, the U.R. Rao Satellite Centre, or URSC (it was called the ISRO Satellite Centre or ISAC at the time) did buy a small amount of simulated lunar soil from the U.S., but soon decided to find its own solution at a lower cost.

1. Annadurai, who as URSC Director oversaw activities related to the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft until he retired in August 2018, recounts that geologists of various national agencies had found that a few sites near Salem in Tamil Nadu had the ‘anorthosite’ rock that somewhat matches lunar soil in composition and features.

•  Professional crushers broke down the rocks and soil to the micro grain sizes sought by the ISRO-led team.
•  Transporters moved the tonnes of this ‘lunar earth’ to ISITE, all free of charge, Dr. Annadurai recalls.

Anorthosites

• The Anorthosites that are common in the Lunar Highlands are not common on the surface of the Earth (The Adirondack Mountains and the Canadian Shield are exceptions).
•  They form the ancient cores of continents on the Earth, but these have largely been obliterated by overlying sedimentary deposits and by plate tectonic activity.
•  The Highlands rocks are largely Anorthosite, which is a kind of igneous rock that forms when lava cools more slowly than in the case of basalts.

How ISRO’s lunar simulation is different form other country simulation?

• Many other space organisations from several countries have failed to replicate lunar soil simulant and its behaviour on Earth.
• The difference between ISRO’s lunar soil simulant and other agency’s simulants is that ISRO has successfully found a way to replicate highlands where others created moon soil which is generally found in the flat regions of the Moon.

ISRO Chief K. Sivan

•  ISRO chief K. Sivan in his statement revealed that this new progress of the space agency will ensure successful soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 rover through a sustainable preparation stimulus.

Chandrayaan-3

• As per the reports, ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 mission is expected to launch by late 2020 or early in 2021.
• The Chandrayaan-3 is going to have a lander and rover, unlike the Chandrayaan-2 which constituted of an orbiter along with a lander and rover.

Why no Orbiter?

•  The ISRO Chief explained that Chandrayaan-2 orbiter remains in good health and should continue to operate for years to come and so there is no need to send an orbiter in India’s third mission on Moon.

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