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Chandrayaan-2, the lunar mission under which the ISRO will for the first time attempt to land a rover on the moon's south pole, will be launched in April, Jitendra Singh, in-charge of the Department of Space, said on Friday, 16 February.
The rover of India's second lunar mission, costing nearly Rs 800 crore, will be made to land near the yet-unexplored south pole, ISRO's newly-appointed chairman K Sivan said.
Chandrayaan-2 will be ISRO's first inter-planetary mission to land a rover on any celestial body.
Sivan noted that the window to launch the mission is between April and November this year.
Citing the reason behind landing the rover near the south pole, Sivan said it is a "very tricky area" with rocks formed a million years ago.
Another reason, he cited, behind landing the rover near the south pole was that the area has not been explored by other missions. "Most of the lunar missions in the past have explored the area around the equator of the moon," Sivan added.
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