India and Japan discuss progress of Chandrayaan-5-LUPEX moon landing mission

Space agency officials from India and Japan met for the third time at the southern Indian city of Bengaluru, discussing technical details of the future joint Lunar Polar Exploration(LUPEX) Mission, which India refers to as Chandrayaan-5.

This third Technical Interface Meeting (TIM-3) held at the ISRO Headquarters was attended by senior officials, project executives, and technical team members from the Indian Space Research Organization(ISRO), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA), and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), Japan.

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Chandrayaan-5 / LUPEX mission will be the fifth mission in India's Chandrayaan series of lunar missions, and the first in collaboration with Japan's JAXA. The Indian Government approved Chandrayaan-5 / LUPEX mission on March 10th, 2025, in the form of financial sanction.

The mission is meant to explore the lunar volatile materials, including lunar water, in the vicinity of a Permanently Shadowed Region (PSR) in the less-explored and resource-rich lunar South pole.

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The mission will be launched by JAXA onboard its H3-24L launch vehicle, carrying the ISRO-made lunar lander, which will carry the MHI, Japan-made lunar rover. The scientific instruments for this mission would be contributed by ISRO, JAXA, European Space Agency(ESA) and the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA), all thematically connected with the exploration and in-situ analysis of the volatiles reserved in the lunar polar region.

During the meeting, Ganesh Pillai, Scientific Secretary, ISRO congratulated both teams for the technical achievements so far, and emphasized on the importance of the collaborative endeavor for the scientific and technical aspects of the mission. Dr. Tirtha Pratim Das, Director, Science Programme Office, ISRO HQ, briefed about the major milestones achieved in terms of the landing site selection, payload optimization, mission design, as well as the ground segment and communication aspects. Ravi Chandra Babu, study team leader of Chandrayaan-5/LUPEX, briefed about the technical configurations arrived at. He emphasized on the need for the clear definition of the milestones, timeline and deliverables of the project.

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Dai-Asoh, JAXA, during his opening address, briefed about the technical progress made towards the development of the rover and the related interfaces. Further, the officials deliberated on the various technical interfaces, joint mission implementation plan, as well as the potential landing sites for the mission.

Earlier this year, ISRO Chief Dr. V. Narayanan had told WION's Sidharth.M.P, that this joint missionwill feature a 350kg lunar rover from Japan, which is 10times heavier than the 25kg 'Pragyan' rover that was deployed as part of India's homegrown Chandrayaan-3 mission in the year 2023.

H3- The rocket that will launch Chandrayaan-5/LUPEX

According to JAXA, the H3 Launch Vehicle is Japan's new mainstay rocket. The three-stage vehicle stands 63meters tall and weighs 574tons. The rocket is powered by solid-fuels and cryogenic fuels (Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen). The H3 is built to reduce launch price by utilizing commercial-off-the-shelf products of other domestic industries such as the automobile industry rather than products exclusive to space use. Instead of following the build-to-order production approach, the industries followsomething similar to the line production system which is used for general industrial products.

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The H3 rocket carrying theLUPEXmission will be launched from the Tanegashima Space Center (TNSC), the largest rocket-launch complex in Japan with a total area of about 9,700,000 square meters. The facility is located in the south of Kagoshima Prefecture, along the southeast coast of Tanegashima, it is widely regarded as the most beautiful rocket-launch complex in the world.

LUPEXand its specifications

LUPEX’s objective is to collect data on the quantity and quality of water resources and its concentration principles in order to determine the extent lunar water resources can be used for future sustainable space exploration activities. The overallLUPEXcraft would weigh 6,500kg approximately, and this includes a 350kg rover that measures 2.0m long, 1.8 wide and 3.3 tall. The rover being developed by JAXA will drive on its own to search for areas where water is likely to be present and sample the soil by digging into the ground with a drill. The plan is to acquire data by analyzing the collected samples in detail with observation equipment mounted on the rover. The mission is expected to live a little over 100days after the lunar landing, and it could live for a maximum of one year, as per JAXA.

Why is there a lot of interest in water on the moon ?

Water can be electrolyzed(split) to produce rocket fuel (oxygen and hydrogen). If there is enough water, it will be an important resource for future crewed space activities because it will eliminate the need to transport large quantities of fuel from the earth. For this reason, not only Japan but also space agencies around the world are now planning to investigate water (ice)resources in the polar regions of the Moon.LUPEXwill land in an area where past remote sensing observations indicate the high possibility of existence of water (ice) .LUPEXrover will directly measure the water content by in-situ observation. In addition, by observing the distribution and existence of water resources and quantifying its amount,LUPEXwill collect the basic data on the potential use of water resources and contribute to the Artemis Program, a proposed US-led effort to return astronauts to the moon and enable their long-term presence.