Chandrayaan-1 : India launches it’s First Moon Mission

On Wednesday, India launched its first unmanned moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, marking a major milestone in the country’s space programme and a new step to assert its power in space. The lift-off took place in cloudy skies at 6:22 am (0052 GMT) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, a barrier island off the coast of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. It was launched by Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) own PSLV-C11rocket.

Chandrayaan-1, which means “Moon Craft” in Sanskrit, is on a two-year orbital mission to provide a detailed map of the mineral, chemical and topographical characteristics of the moon’s surface. The $80 million spacecraft was built at ISRO’s Satellite Centre, Bangalore, with contribution from various wings of the space agency, including the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.

The Chandrayaan-1 mission is aimed at high-resolution remote sensing of the moon in visible, near infrared (NIR), low energy X-rays and high-energy X-ray regions. It will conduct chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface for distribution of elements such as Magnesium, Aluminum, Silicon, Calcium, Iron and Titanium with a spatial resolution of about 25 km and high atomic number elements such as Radon, Uranium & Thorium with a spatial resolution of about 20 km.

Then, simultaneous photo geological and chemical mapping will enable identification of different geological units, which will test the early evolutionary history of the moon and help in determining the nature and stratigraphy of the lunar crust.

Of the 11 payloads carried by the Chandrayaan-1, five are Indian, three are from the European Space Agency, two from the U.S. and one from Bulgaria. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3, from NASA will assess mineral composition of the moon from orbit. The other NASA payload, the Mini-SAR, will look for ice deposits in the moon’s polar regions. The Indian payloads included Terrain Mapping Camera, Hyperspectral Imager, Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument, High Energy X-ray Spectrometer and Moon Impact Probe.

Category: Space | Tags: Chandrayaan-1, India, Space