India and Japan are collaborating on a bold mission to drill and analyze water ice on the Moon

Chandrayaan 5 LUPEX will help NASA with Artemis planning too. 🧊🌗

India has formally approved the joint ISRO-JAXA Chandrayaan 5 (LUPEX) mission to study water ice on the Moon’s south pole. The mission and its approval are notable in many ways as we’ll see below.

Illustration of the Chandrayaan 5 lander and rover, and a mission graphic. Images: JAXA / ISRO

The Chandrayaan 5 lander carrying the LUPEX rover on top of it will launch on Japan’s H3 rocket by end of decade, following India’s launch of Chandrayaan 4 which is targeted by 2028. The ~6,000-kilogram ISRO-developed Chandrayaan 5 lander will deploy the JAXA-provided ~350-kilogram LUPEX rover on the Moon’s south pole to directly study the nature, abundance, and accessibility of water ice. As part of its exploration spanning at least 3.5 months, the LUPEX rover will enter permanently shadowed regions seeking water ice and other such volatiles.

Aggregated solar illumination map of the Moon’s south pole made from stacked observations by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, shown in perspective view. The brightest spots are topographic highs that are maximally sunlit whereas the pitch black areas are permanently shadowed — within which water ice deposits are thought to exist. Image: NASA

In terms of hardware development, JAXA and Mitsubishi have been validating the LUPEX rover design through a series of tests using qualification and engineering models. Engineering models for several rover instruments have also…