NEW DELHI, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) -- India will launch its second lunar mission in April this year, the country's Space Minister Jitendra Singh said Friday.
"India is going to launch Chandrayaan-2 in April. It is under Chandrayaan-1 mission that the ISRO (Indian Space Reaserch Organisation) spotted water on the moon. Chandrayaan-2 is a further extension of the project and it is as good as landing a man on the moon," Singh told the media.
Under Chandrayaan-2, state-owned ISRO will try to land a rover on the moon's south pole.
India successfully launched its first mission, Chandrayaan-1, to the moon in 2008. It was launched on Oct. 22, 2008, and included a probe, impactor and orbiter. Its moon impact probe crash-landed on the lunar surface on Nov. 14, 2008.
The first lunar mission in India costed about 60 million U.S. dollars.
