Chandrayaan Lunar mission by Indian Space Research Organization To Launch
After nine years of hard work, the countdown for Chandrayaan-1 – India’s first unmanned moon mission – has begun at the Sriharikota space station. The launch is scheduled for early Wednesday morning.
Chandrayaan-1 will orbit the moon for about two years, mapping the topography and mineral content of the lunar soil. It will take off from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, about 80 km from Chennai, and off the Bay of Bengal.
The Chandrayaan-1 launch would be around 0620 hrs IST on October 22, weather conditions permitting.
Ninety-nine per cent of the integration and testing is complete and the countdown has begun for India’s historic tryst with the moon.The success of Chandrayaan-1 will catapult India among the top five space exploring countries of the world.
The main objective of Chandrayaan-I is investigation of the distribution of various minerals and chemical elements and high-resolution three-dimensional mapping of the entire lunar surface. ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) will launch Chandrayaan-I into a 240 km x 24,000 km earth orbit. Subsequently, the spacecraft’s own propulsion system will be used to place it in a 100-km polar orbit around the moon.
M Annadurai, project chief, Chandrayaan, had said earlier: “This will be the first step towards our manned mission to the moon.”
The remote sensing satellite will weigh 1,304 kg (590 kg initial orbit mass and 504 kg dry mass) and carry high-resolution remote sensing equipment for visible, near infrared, soft and hard X-ray frequencies. Over its expected lifetime of two years, it will survey the lunar surface and produce a map of its chemical characteristics and three-dimensional topography.
They estimate the cost to be INR 3.8 billion (US$ 83 million) , expected to cost Rs 386 crore,it will study the surface of the moon using light. Many other countries are also looking at the possibility of mining the abundant mineral resources on the moon.
The mission includes five ISRO payloads and six payloads from other international space agencies such as NASA and ESA, and the Bulgarian Aerospace Agency .
Source Info Chandrayaan : [ISRO], [Wikipedia]
Leave a Reply