Mumbai: India’s second mission to Moon, ‘Chandrayaan II´, which is expected to be launched in 2013, has a lot of challenges for scientists and engineers, said the mission director Dr M Annadurai on Saturday.

“Chandrayaan II will not be just a probe. It will be landing on Moon and is incrementally and technically challenging mission for Indian scientists,” Annadurai said in an interactive session with the students at the South Indian Education Society (SIES) college at Sion in Central Mumbai.

The fact that water molecules are confirmed on moon surface especially on the sunlit areas and their origin is not external sources like meteors (new postulate), it has become important to to have more exploration and Chandrayaan II will be landing on moon to collect more data on it, he said.

Asked whether the same scientists of Chandrayaan I will be working for Chandrayan II, he said “yes” and added that even the same participants from abroad will be in the mission.

Interest is shown by other countries like Russia and “there is a chance of Russia participating in Chandrayaan II mission,” he said.

When asked how long it will take to analyse all the data collected from Chandrayaan I mission, Annadurai said “it will take at least two to three and a half years for complete analysis.”