India Launches First Moon Mission, Chandrayaan Successfully Videos
India’s first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan I (Meaning LunarCraft) is scheduled to be launched on 22 October 2008 at 00:50 UTC by India’s own Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-XL from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
After this Launch India enters into the elite club that has sent missions to the moon.
Other members of the club are the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan. The US returns to lunar exploration aboard Chandrayaan-1, which is carrying two NASA instruments in its payload.
The 44.4-metre-tall 316-tonne rocket, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV C11), had a copybook launch at 0620 hrs (IST) and completed its mission by placing the lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 into its scheduled orbit around the earth within 18 minutes, just as planned.
Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) warhorse rocket PSLV C-11 put Chandrayaan-I into the earth orbit at around 6:30 a.m. today.
“I congratulate all the scientists associated with this mission for the successful completion of the first step,” the Prime Minister of India said.
With the successful launch of this remote sensing satellite weighing 1304 kg India will become the sixth country to send any type of lunar mission in space, Chandrayaan-1 will take approximately eight days to complete its nearly 3,86,000 km long journey for reaching into its final orbit 100 km from the moon, Chandrayaan-1 will carry a high resolution remote sensing equipment for visible, near infrared, soft and hard X-ray frequencies. Over a two-year period, it is intended to survey the lunar surface to produce a complete map of its chemical characteristics and 3-dimensional topography. The polar regions are of special interest, as they might contain water ice.
Watch Video of Chandrayaan Launch Video
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