India and Japan to Send Joint Mission to the Moon in 2023

India and Japan are going to send a joint mission to the Moon in 2023. They are planning to send a pilotless device to search for water in craters of the Earth satellite, reports the correspondent of tvbrics.com with reference to TASS.

Japan is supposed to provide a new H3 heavy launch vehicle and a piloted moon rover, and India will provide a landing module. Probably, it will be an upgraded version of the Vikram module, which was sent to the Moon on July 22 under the Chandrayaan-2 mission.

The main objective of the joint mission is to find water on the Moon. The South Pole of the satellite hides craters where the sunlight never gets. Scientists suppose that these craters can contain ice.

It is supposed that the moon rover will be equipped with special devices for water detection and will be able to move within a radius of 500 m from the lunar landing point.