A scientist involved in India's first unmanned mission to the Moon hopes it will help unlock the mystery of how it was formed.
Professor Manuel Grande of Aberystwyth University will attend the launch of the Chandrayaan-1 craft on Wednesday.
Prof Grande is one of a number of scientists working on a camera which will map the surface of the Moon.
This will help experts understand its origins, its evolution and the mineral resources that exist there.
Weather conditions permitting, India's spacecraft will be launched next week, and over the next two years it will survey the lunar surface to produce a complete map of its chemical characteristics and its landscape.
Prof Grande, head of the solar systems physics group at Aberystwyth University, is the principal investigator on the sophisticated X-ray camera C1XS, which forms the UK contribution to the mission.
This will enable us to pin down the mysteries which remain about the origin of the Earth-Moon system
Professor Manuel Grande
He was also involved in the European Space Agency's exploratory Smart 1 lunar mission, which crashed into the Moon's surface in 2006.
"The C1XS instrument will provide us with a new picture of what the Moon is made of not just here and there, but over the whole surface of our eighth continent," said Prof Grande.
Impact probe
Prof Grande is leading a two-day team meeting of key scientists working on C1XS at Aberystwyth University on Thursday and Friday.
Dr Ian Crawford from the University of London's Birkbeck College, who chairs the C1XS science team, said: "There is still a lot we don't know about the Moon.
"Accurate maps of the surface composition will help us unravel its internal structure and geological history.
" We will learn more about what happened on the Moon since it formed and how and when it cooled. By peering into its craters, we may even be able to see below its crust to the material underneath."
Chandrayaan-1 will also drop a small impact probe on to the lunar surface to test its properties.
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