Mission to Moon- Chandrayaan I [Archive]

barrykul

October 22nd, 2008, 06:55 AM

Chandrayaan-1 placed in transfer orbit (http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200810220921.htm)

Sriharikota (PTI): Chandrayaan-1, India's maiden moon spacecraft, was on Wednesday put into Transfer Orbit around the earth by the Polar Launch Vehicle PSLV-C11 about 19 minutes after it blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here.

The 1,380 kg Chandrayaan-1, carrying 11 payloads, was released into a Tansfer Orbit at a perigee (nearest point to earth) of about 250 km and apogee (farthest point from the earth ) of about 23,000 km, 18.2 minutes after the PSLV-C11 blasted off as the scientists broke into jubiliation at the mission control centre.

After a series of procedures over the next two weeks, the spacecraft would reach its desired Lunar orbit and placed at a height of 100 km from the Lunar surface, marking the operational phase of the mission which would put India in the elite lunar club.

Earlier, at the end of the 49-hour countdown, the 44.4 meter tall four-stage PSLV-11 lifted off from the second launch pad into a cloudy sky.

This is the 14th flight of ISRO's workhorse PSLV, which had launched 29 satellites into a variety of orbits since 1993, and 13th successive one in a row.

Chandrayaan-1 is carrying 11 payloads, five entirely designed and developed in India, three from European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from US, which would explore the Moon over the next two years.

Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G Madhavan Nair described the successful launch as a historic moment in India's space programme.

"The launch was perfect and precise. The satellite has been placed in the earth orbit. With this, we have completed the first leg of the mission and it will take 15 days to reach the lunar orbit," Nair announced in the mission control centre shortly after PSLV-C11 put the spacecraft in a transfer orbit.

After circling the earth in its highly elliptical Transfer Orbit for a while, Chandrayaan-1 would be taken into more elliptical orbits by repeated firing of the spacecraft's Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) at opportune moments.

Subsequently, the LAM would be again fired to take the spacecraft to the vicinity of the moon by following a Lunar Transfer Trajecctory (LTT) path, whose apogee lies at 3,87,000 km.

Later, when Chandrayaan-1 reaches the vicinity of the moon, its LAM would be fired again so as to slow down the spacecraft sufficiently to enable the gravity of the moon to capture it into an elliptical orbit. The next step would be to reduce the height of the spacecraft orbit around the moon in various steps.

After some more procedures, Chandrayaan-1's orbit would be finally lowered to its intended 100 km height from the lunar surface, which was expected to take place around November 8.

Later, the Moon Impact Probe would be ejected from Chandrayaan-1 in a chosen area following which the cameras and other payloads would be turned on and thoroughly tested, marking the operational phase of the mission

Chandrayaan-1 aims at achieving expansion of scientific knowledge about Moon, upgradation of Indian technological capability and providing challenging opportunities for planetary research to young scientists.

The objectives would be achieved through high-resolution remote sensing of moon in the visible, near infrared, microwave and x-ray region of electromagnetic spectrum.

The eleven payloads, five designed and developed in India, three from European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from NASA, would expand various scientific knowledge about the moon.

The Indian payloads included Terrain Mapping Camera, Hyperspectral Imager, Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument, High Energy X-ray Spectrometer and Moon Impact Probe.

Chandrayaan-1 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 ground facilities of Chandrayaan-I would perform the highly important task of receiving the microwave containing the health information of the spacecraft as well as the valuable scientific information, which the spacecraft sends.

It also transmits the radio commands to be sent to the spacecraft during all the phases of its mission.

Marathaman

October 22nd, 2008, 07:02 AM

Congrats ISRO! Congrats India!
:banana::banana:

Illusionist

October 22nd, 2008, 07:50 AM

Tis a great day for India, Isro and team of dedicated folks who made this happen. Wow, haven't we come a long way since the British Occupation of India. Way to go!

This week is celebration week.

India launches first moon mission (http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/10/21/india.space/index.html)

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/TECH/space/10/21/india.space/art.india.afp.gi.jpg

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200810220999.jpg

Go baby Go...:banana:
congrats to every one.
jai hind

Illusionist

October 22nd, 2008, 07:53 AM

To put things in perspective.. here is the path
According to the latest development the craft is in transfer orbit.
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/80133-europe-moon-chandrayaan-1_3.jpg

sanjupalayat

October 22nd, 2008, 08:48 AM

Proud to be an INDIAN...........................Congrats.....ISRO......

ajay_ijn

October 22nd, 2008, 10:15 AM

phaedrus

October 22nd, 2008, 04:21 PM

great day for all indians!!
congrats ISRO :banana:

barrykul

October 22nd, 2008, 04:53 PM

skdubai

October 22nd, 2008, 04:56 PM

awesome pictures man!!! where did ya get em??

ImBoredNow

October 22nd, 2008, 06:03 PM

Fusionist

October 22nd, 2008, 06:25 PM

congrats for a perfect liftoff t oal lthe ISRO scientists :cheers:

now is the interestring part, wait adn watch if it makes it to the lunar orbit..new frontier for India indeed.

barrykul

October 22nd, 2008, 07:11 PM

awesome pictures man!!! where did ya get em??

Isro.

numb.soul

October 22nd, 2008, 07:55 PM

deleted

numb.soul

October 22nd, 2008, 08:00 PM

INCREDIBLE INDIA

oh man its sooooooooooo COOOOL .............

:dj::dj::nocrook::nocrook::master::master::rock::rock::rock::rock::gunz::gunz: ::guns1::guns1::righton::righton::righton::righton:

congratulations to ISRO ... n all fellow indians ..
:cheer::cheer::cheer::cheer::banana2::banana2::banana::banana::cheer::cheer::cheer::cheer:

indiYYYYYEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH .......................

rkramesh

October 22nd, 2008, 10:42 PM

Some spectacular pictures of Chandrayaan-I
http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/full-vehicle/ch5.jpg
http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/full-vehicle/ch6.jpg
http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/full-vehicle/ch7.jpg

My Chalice of Joy brimmeth :bow:- Oh my beloved Bharath - we have started back to our glory days.

I
N
D
I
A
is literally taking off here - may it herald a glorious new chapter in Bharath's fortunes...

Arul Murugan

October 23rd, 2008, 01:00 AM

Great Pictures....

Congrats to ISRO.... India is rocking.

Hindustani

October 23rd, 2008, 02:00 AM

Incredible

Just unbelievable

In terms of national accomplishment, I seriously wonder where this one ranks. Should be right on top. Planting the tricolor on Moon along with very few developed nations' flags is unthinkable. But soon to be a reality.

Fusionist

October 23rd, 2008, 02:07 AM

superdesi2100

October 23rd, 2008, 02:07 AM

This story might not be relevant to the topic here - still it gave me goose bumps...

Amroha girl chose jeans, not burqa, joined ISRO (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/amroha-girl-chose-jeans-not-burqa-joined-isro/376807/0)

Among the scores of families of ISRO scientists who woke up early on Wednesday, prayed and waited for the successful lift-off of Chandrayaan I, was one in Chaugori Mohalla, a tiny, traditional Muslim neighbourhood in UP’s Amroha.

Khushboo Mirza is just one of the 12 engineers of the Check-Out Division of Chandrayaan I which carried out the thermal, vacuum and assembling checks on each component of the satellite. But the story of the 23-year-old is inspiration for a village which once looked at her journey in shock and disbelief.

When her father died when she was seven, her mother, Farhat, broke norms to run the family’s petrol pump to keep her children in school. Her brother, Khushtar, a 2005 BTech from Jamia Millia Islamia, shelved his career ambitions to take charge later. To get out of the claustrophobic bylanes of Amroha, Khushboo applied for B Tech at Aligarh Muslim University. A volleyball player, she qualified through the sports quota. When she graduated, she landed a lucrative job with Adobe but gave it up to join ISRO two years ago.

With traditional censures from the sleepy village getting louder, Farhat accompanied her daughter to ISRO training programmes across the country. And in an area where the women wear burqas, she let her daughter don a pair of jeans. “In the absence of her father, and given that she had to travel so much, a lot of people said a lot of unkind things. But I told my daughter to work hard and let her be. She wanted to wear jeans, not a burqa, and I let her,” Farhat says.

“I wanted to make my contribution to Indian science,” Khushboo told The Indian Express from Sriharikota, Chandrayaan’s launch site. “I think I have made a start.”

“When Khushboo was born, there was no water in the pipes. We had to get water for the delivery from a well which is since closed,” recalls a relative. Now, the family has installed a generator so that Khushboo’s younger sister, Mahak, a student of engineering at Moradabad Institute of Technology, can surf the internet unhindered.

This morning, the village started its day watching Chandrayaan’s launch. Residents now describe the area, which still has a water problem and an erratic power supply, as “Khushboo Mirza’s village.”

Mohammad Atif, a class VIII student who Khushboo coaches in her free time, spent the entire day at Khushboo’s house. He says he “wants to be just like her.”

“She has accomplished the dreams of her father and brother who could not practise engineering,” says Farhat. For her brother Khushtar, her success means something else too. “For all those who paint all Muslim youth with the same brush (of terrorism and fundamentalism), this is a positive message,” he says.

Sridhar

October 23rd, 2008, 02:58 AM

possibly a dumb question, but what is the purpose of the wiring connecting the towers around the launch pad ? and what puposes do these towers serve anyway apart from the obvious one that is the flood lights ?
These towers are lightning towers. The towers and the cables connecting them protect the vehicle, the umbilical tower and the launch pad from atmospheric electrical activity.

skganji

October 23rd, 2008, 02:58 AM

An article printed in the Orange county register a daily newspaper published from Orange county , Southern California.
http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/315/unmannedmoonmissiondo8.jpg

Arul Murugan

October 23rd, 2008, 03:44 AM

DESTINATION MOON

INDIA BREAKS INTO AN ELITE CLUB OF FIVE

The USA, Russia, European Space Agency, Japan and China, and now India. With the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1, India reaches an elevated position in the comity of nations.

Srinivas Laxman | TNN

Sriharikota: India on Wednesday rocketed into the big league of the exclusive lunar club with a precision launch of its moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, at 6.22 am despite inclement weather at Sriharikota. The other members of this global elite are the USA, Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China. India is the sixth member of this club.
The take-off of the moon rocket was a magical moment that Indians had been eagerly and anxiously waiting for. Within minutes, the lift-off elevated India’s position in the world. As dawn broke over Sriharikota, the mighty brown and white 44.4-metre-tall, four-stage PSLV rose from the launch pad to carry the 1,400-kg spacecraft 3,84,000 km to the moon in the first leg of its mission.
The spacecraft will execute multiple orbital manoeuvres and get to the vicinity of the moon in a fortnight. Thereafter, a 29-kg Indian payload, the Moon Impact Probe, with the Indian tricolour, will detach from the mother craft and land on the moon after a 17-minute flight. This was incorporated at the suggestion of former President A P J Abdul Kalam.
The spacecraft of the first international mission to the moon led by India is carrying six scientific payloads from abroad — three are from the European Space Agency, two from Nasa and one from Bulgaria — and five from India.
The mission initiates a fresh era of interplanetary missions by India to Mars and other planets in the future. The initial success of the programme was the result of five years of striving by Indian scientists. For the world, it was a clear demonstration of what India can achieve. As former ISRO chief K Kasturirangan said, “The moon mission will help realise India’s aim to become a technological powerhouse.”
Moments before the lift-off, the scientists in the control room were anxious about the weather until there was an announcement at 5.50 am from the control room: “All weather parameters are within the launch criteria.”
And 16 minutes prior to the launch, the vehicle director, the spacecraft director, the range operations director and the mission director declared that all systems were ready for the flight. Then, the mission director said: “Launch operations for Chandrayaan mission authorised.” Twelve minutes before the take-off, the automatic launch sequence system was
computers in the spacecraft were in flight mode. When the countdown hit zero, one could hear a blast a little distance away and a few seconds later the rocket thundered skywards. It triggered a wave of applause from the huge gathering of mediapersons and others in the area. Many prayers of gratitude were shot upwards as well.
A few minutes later, one could only get a brief glimpse of the rocket as it disappeared into clouds. But its sound reverberated for sometime. When it reached an altitude of 153.9 km, an official declared: “An excellent launch. All telemetry so far transmitted indicate that the performance is satisfactory.”
Project director Mylswamy Annadurai said the mission’s success was a culmination of collective efforts. Said vehicle director George Koshy: “We couldn’t have asked for more.” Director of ISRO’s telemetry, tracking and command network S K Shivakumar said his organisation had already started receiving signals from other international stations.
initiated.

From times

Arul Murugan

October 23rd, 2008, 03:58 AM

Few videos

6QPaa9HRToE

ipBOotJDJ1k

Illusionist

October 23rd, 2008, 07:48 AM

An article printed in the Orange county register a daily newspaper published from Orange county , Southern California.
http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/315/unmannedmoonmissiondo8.jpg

even the newspaper in small town like baton rouge , Louisiana has a half page coverage on Chandrayaan 1. really makes you proud to see your country's name in a good light in local newspapers.
:)

barrykul

October 23rd, 2008, 08:08 AM

On that Amroha girl story, Good one. Let us not forget the Father of the launch program Dr. A. P. J. Kalam. If every Indian regardless of religion follows Guru Kalam, India will be the first among the body of nations.

barrykul

October 23rd, 2008, 08:12 AM

skdubai

October 23rd, 2008, 08:43 AM

The headlines of almost every news paper i have read since the launch has been about this... Really made people take notice dint they?

Into_salem

October 23rd, 2008, 10:06 AM

Some spectacular pictures of Chandrayaan-I

Great... Great .... shots. Matching the mood of Indians. Thanks.

Illusionist

October 23rd, 2008, 05:38 PM

Source:ISRO (http://isro.org/pressrelease/Oct23_2008.htm)

Chandrayaan-1 Spacecraft’s Orbit Raised

The first orbit-raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was performed at 09:00 hrs Indian Standard Time (IST) this morning (October 23, 2008) when the spacecraft’s 440 Newton Liquid Engine was fired for about 18 minutes by commanding the spacecraft from Spacecraft Control Centre (SCC) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Peenya, Bangalore. With this engine firing, Chandrayaan-1’s apogee has been raised to 37,900 km, while its perigee has been raised a little, to 305 km. In this orbit, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft takes about 11 hours to go round the Earth once.

Chandrayaan-1, India’s first spacecraft to Moon, was successfully launched by PSLV-C11 yesterday (October 22, 2008) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota. The launch vehicle placed ?Chandrayaan-1 in an elliptical orbit with a perigee (closest point to the earth) of 255 km and apogee (farthest point to earth) of 22,860 km. In this initial orbit, Chandrayaan-1 orbited the Earth once in about six and a half hours. Following its successful launch, the SCC acquired the first signals and conducted preliminary operations on Chandrayaan-1. The Deep Space Network (DSN) at Bylalu tracked the spacecraft in this orbit and received signals in S and X band and has sent commands to the spacecraft.

All systems onboard the spacecraft are functioning normally. Further orbit raising maneuvers are planned in the coming few days

Sridhar

October 23rd, 2008, 07:15 PM

Deleted

ImBoredNow

October 23rd, 2008, 08:37 PM

^^Great Inspiring story

barrykul

October 24th, 2008, 07:05 PM

xPosting

The team of scientists tracking Chandrayaan-1, at ISRO's Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu.

http://www.deccanherald.com/UserFiles/DHGallery/Oct232008/city_gal.jpg

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C-11 blasts off carrying India's first unmanned moon mission Chandrayaan-1 from the Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota

http://www.deccanherald.com/UserFiles/DHGallery/Oct232008/index_gal.jpg

Illusionist

October 25th, 2008, 02:17 AM

Mission profile changed. now instead of going to moon in a straight path, it will take a more spiral path.
http://isro.org/Chandrayaan/images/mission1.jpg

skdubai

October 25th, 2008, 01:31 PM

any idea why they did that?

Illusionist

October 25th, 2008, 08:15 PM

^ ^ No clue. may be more knolegable paople can give the answer.

Chandrayaan-1 Spacecraft’s Orbit Raised Further
now it is in EBN-2 orbit as per image posted above.

link (http://isro.org/pressrelease/Oct25_2008a.htm)
The second orbit-raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was carried out at 05:48 hrs IST this morning (October 25, 2008) when the spacecraft’s 440 Newton Liquid Engine was fired for about 16 minutes by commanding the spacecraft from Spacecraft Control Centre (SCC) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Peenya, Bangalore.? With this engine firing, Chandrayaan-1’s apogee has been further raised to 74,715 km, while its perigee has been raised to 336 km. In this orbit, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft takes about twenty-five and a half hours to go round the Earth once. This is the first time an Indian spacecraft has gone beyond the 36,000 km high geostationary orbit and reached an altitude more than twice that height.

It may be recalled that Chandrayaan-1, India’s first spacecraft to Moon, was successfully launched by PSLV-C11 on October 22, 2008 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota. The launch vehicle placed Chandrayaan-1 in an elliptical orbit with a perigee (closest point to earth) of 255 km and apogee (farthest point to earth) of 22,860 km. The first orbit-raising manoeuvre was performed on October 23, 2008 by firing the spacecraft’s liquid engine for 18 minutes resulting in the increase of the spacecraft orbit’s apogee to 37,900 km and the perigee to 305 km. The Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Bylalu is tracking the spacecraft in the present orbit, receiving signals in S and X bands and is sending commands to the spacecraft.

All systems onboard the spacecraft are functioning normally. Further orbit raising maneuvers to take Chandrayaan-1 to still higher orbits are planned in the next few days.

barrykul

October 26th, 2008, 12:26 AM

Just to recap here are sequences

Elliptical orbits Min x Max in Km
Initial Orbit Insertion - 257 x 22,858
First Orbit - 315 x 37,421
Second Orbit - 338 x 73,925
Third Orbit - 348 x 199,277
Fourth Orbit - 530 x 269,201
Moon Capture Orbit - 1019 x 386,194

So far Achieved

PSLV C11 Oct 22 Orbit insertion - 255 x 22,860
LAM Firing 18 Min - Oct 23 First Orbit - 305 x 37,900
LAM Firing 16 Min - Oct 25 Second Orbit - 336 x 74,715

skdubai

October 26th, 2008, 08:50 AM

I dint think the craft carried so much fuel to burn for so long and so many times.. sounds like this would require a lot of fuel......

Illusionist

October 26th, 2008, 09:43 AM

^ ^ I thought about that too... but i guess your able scientists did all the calculations before hand..

on the related news.. now chandrayaan is another step closer to chanda mama..
now i guess it should be at EBN-3. The the round trip journey to earth will take 73 hrs so i guess we wont see another orbit raise for 3 days..

Chandrayaan-1 enters Deep Space

link (http://isro.org/pressrelease/Oct26_2008.htm)
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has entered deep space after crossing the 150,000 km (one and a half lakh km) distance mark from the Earth. ?This happened after the successful completion of the spacecraft’s third orbit raising manoeuvre today (October 26, 2008) morning.
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/orbitrize3.jpg
During this manoeuvre which was initiated at 07:08 IST, the spacecraft’s 440 Newton liquid engine was fired for about nine and a half minutes. With this, Chandrayaan-1 entered a much higher elliptical orbit around the Earth. The apogee (farthest point to Earth) of this orbit lies at 164,600 km while the perigee (nearest point to Earth) is at 348 km. In this orbit, Chandrayaan-1 takes about 73 hours to go round the Earth once.

The antennas of the Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu are playing a crucial role in tracking and communicating with Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in such a high orbit. The spacecraft performance is normal. More orbit raising manoeuvres are planned in the coming few days to take Chandrayaan-1 towards the Moo

barrykul

October 27th, 2008, 01:35 AM

any idea why they did that?

ISRO Chairman Madhavan was saying that they want to get experience tracking vehicle in deep space, hence 5 EBN.

Wondering how the space control center looks like ...

Scientists manning the monitoring consoles on October 25 at the Indian Deep Space Network Control Centre at Byalalu village near Bangalore, where two huge bowl-shaped antennae have been set up to track and communicate with Chandrayaan-1.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/27/images/2008102755931201.jpg

Chandrayaan is half way to moon (http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/27/stories/2008102757820100.htm)

Chandrayaan-1, India’s first spacecraft to the moon, sailed into deep space on Sunday morning and had reached almost half the distance to the moon, which is 3.84 lakh km from the earth.

The three manoeuvres are slated for October 29, November 3 and 8. When the Chandrayaan-1’s engine is fired on November 8, the spacecraft will go round the moon in an orbit of 7,500 km by 500 km. On November 14/15, it will reach the final orbit of 100 km around the moon.

skdubai

October 27th, 2008, 10:40 AM

^^ thanx for the clarification.....

senthil1409

October 27th, 2008, 05:40 PM

There is very little difference between the orbits shown here. The one posted by indrajal intially is a schematic, while the later one he posted is the real trajectory.

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/80133-europe-moon-chandrayaan-1_3.jpg

The almost straight line from earth to moon is part of a bigger ellipse as shown in this picture here

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/6203/80133europemoonchandrayci2.th.jpg (http://img65.imageshack.us/my.php?image=80133europemoonchandrayci2.jpg)http://img65.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)

The scientists will perform a Lunar Burn when the satellite is closest to the moon. If we miss that oppurtunity the satellite will take the dotted path (yellow line) back to earth and go around again, due to gravity. No Fuel is needed! The fuel onboard is to change the direction in which the spacecraft is going. A small change in apogee (near the earth) by a few degrees will make a big difference in the elliptical orbit.

The tricker part is doing the lunar burn, because the spacecraft need to be rotated first before the engines are fired. The simplest analogy is turning your car left or right on a road. You will have to turn (rotate) your car 90 degrees first, before gunning your engines.

Once the satellite revolves around the moon, lunar gravity will take effect and the satellite will start slowly going towards the moon from its 100 Km polar (circular) orbit. The rest of the fuel is used every few months or so to move the satellite back to its orbit. Once all the fuel is used up nothing can be done and gravity will pull the satellite towards the moon and finally the satellite will crash and burn on the surface of the moon. That is why the lifespan of the satellite is only 2 years. The electronics onboard can last a lot longer. If we send up the satellite with more fuel it can have a longer lifetime, but the cost of putting the satellite will be lot higher.

Hope this helps.

Abhay

October 27th, 2008, 10:30 PM

Thanks for the ^^ info. Very informative.

skdubai

October 28th, 2008, 08:48 AM

thats cool, so there is a backup in case we miss the opportunity to get into the moon's orbit!

senthil1409

October 29th, 2008, 06:38 PM

The fourth orbit raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was carried out today (October 29, 2008) morning at 07:38 am IST. During this manoeuvre, the spacecraft’s 440 Newton liquid engine was fired for about three minutes. With this, Chandrayaan-1 entered into a more elliptical orbit whose apogee (farthest point to Earth) lies at 267,000 km (two lakh sixty seven thousand km) while the perigee (nearest point to Earth) lies at 465 km.? Thus, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft’s present orbit extends more than half the way to moon. In this orbit, the spacecraft takes about six days to go round the Earth once.

The health of the spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore with support from Indian Deep Space Network antennas at Byalalu. All systems onboard the spacecraft are performing normally. One more orbit raising manoeuvre is scheduled to send the spacecraft to the vicinity of the moon at a distance of about 384,000 km from the Earth.

Source: http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Oct29_2008.htm

Illusionist

October 30th, 2008, 07:41 AM

i wish the satellite was taking some pics on its way to moon. it would be so cool to see earth and moon through the eyes of chandrayaan.

barrykul

October 30th, 2008, 07:59 AM

How Chandrayaan-1 is raised to higher orbits (http://www.hindu.com/seta/2008/10/30/stories/2008103050121400.htm)

Chandrayaan-1 could have been fired to reach the moon, which is about 3,84,000 km from earth, in one shot. But that was not done. Instead the spacecraft is being moved towards the moon in increasingly elliptical orbits with an apogee (farthest point from the earth) increasing many times more than the perigee.

“We could have done it one shot, but there is a possibility of missing the moon,” said M. Annadurai, Project Director of Chandrayaan-1 to this Correspondent. “So we have adopted an incremental increase in the orbits’ perigee.”

That probably explains why the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has decided to settle for five increasingly elliptical orbits before Chandrayaan-1 reaches the moon’s sphere of influence. Why is the firing always undertaken at the perigee position?

“To increase the apogee, we must fire at the perigee [position]. And firing should consume less energy. So the firing is done at the perigee,” Dr. Annadurai explained.

One more reason to fire at the perigee is to ensure that the spacecraft can be tracked by 3-4 ground stations. “The spacecraft is allowed to complete one or more orbits till such time 3-4 ground stations can track it. But we will fire it at the earliest opportunity,” he said.

But not always can one assume that the firing will happen as planned. So any change in this will in turn affect the apsidal line (imaginary line that connects the apogee and perigee). This should be corrected and maintained if the rendezvous with the moon is to happen.

Increasing the apogee

And what ensures that the apogee increases many hundred kilometres after every firing while the perigee changes by only a few kilometres? “When the firing is done exactly at perigee, the velocity increases and the apogee keeps increasing. There will be no change in the perigee position,” he said.

But firing the spacecraft exactly at the perigee position is only theoretically possible. This results in a small change in the perigee altitude.

Duration of firing

“It is not an instant firing [at the perigee]. It takes a few hundred seconds to complete the firing,” he said. But great effort is however taken to centre the firing around the perigee position.

For instance, the first firing to take Chandrayaan-1 from the initial orbit to the first orbit (with an apogee of 38,000 km) took about 1060 seconds to complete. The second firing to take the spacecraft to the nearly 75,000 km apogee took 920 seconds. And the third firing to raise it to about 1,65,000 km apogee took 560 seconds.

The fourth firing to take Chandrayaan-1 to 2,67,000 km will take about 190 seconds and finally the last raise to 3,80,000 will take 150 seconds.

Though the original plan was to reach 2,00,000 km apogee in the third orbit, ISRO could only raise it to 1,65,000 km. So will that lead to any problems? “This can be made up for in the next firing,” Dr. Annadurai said.

Will the change in the orbit-transfer strategy from five-and-half days to nearly a fortnight lead to increased fuel consumption and hence reduced mission life? “The amount of propellant required to fire the spacecraft to 4,00,000 km is less, whether it is done in one shot or in stages. And the propellant is used only for changing the orbits and not for orbiting around the earth,” he explained.

Orbiting around the earth is mainly through the gravitational force of the earth. But the gravitational influence of sun and moon would still play a role, though minor. Since the spacecraft goes around only for a few days in each orbit, there will not be any change in the orbits and hence the need to use propellant to correct the orbits would not arise.

But that will not be case when Chandrayaan-1 orbits the moon for two years. “There will be a need to correct the orbit once in two weeks to maintain a 100 km circular orbit,” said Dr. Annadurai.

Less energy required

While earth’s gravitational force will exist even when the spacecraft moves further and further away from the earth, the force will decrease with distance. “So firing it to the fourth and fifth orbit will require less energy,” said Dr. Annadurai. “Since some propellant is already used in the previous firings, the overall mass would come down. So the effort required to fire reduces.”

Reverse firing

Five-and-half days after the fifth firing, Chandrayaan-1 will have its rendezvous with the moon. Chandrayaan-1 will get nearer to the moon on November 8 when it reaches the 3,81,000 km apogee.

Though the moon’s influence will be predominant, the velocity of Chandrayaan-1 has to be reduced to enable the moon to capture it. Else, it can fly past the moon.

Once captured by the moon’s gravity, the velocity of the spacecraft has to be reduced to help it reach its final destination of 100 km circular orbit around the moon.

This is achieved by reversing what was done to raise its orbits.

“First, the firing is resorted at both perigee and apogee positions. And the firing takes place only after the orientation of the spacecraft is reversed — turned 180 degrees,” he said.

While the momentum of the spacecraft allows it to move in the same direction, the reverse firing helps it to reduce the velocity. The reduction in velocity is again undertaken in an incremental manner to reach the predetermined 100 km circular orbit around the moon.

scdubagoor

October 30th, 2008, 03:28 PM

i wish the satellite was taking some pics on its way to moon. it would be so cool to see earth and moon through the eyes of chandrayaan.

Yeah me too. Like the picture taken by the Apollo mission from the halfway point.

May be everything is tucked in and in safe mode. Is the solar wing already deployed?

senthil1409

October 31st, 2008, 06:19 PM

Yeah me too. Like the picture taken by the Apollo mission from the halfway point.

May be everything is tucked in and in safe mode. Is the solar wing already deployed?

Well, the greater minds @ ISRO have thought about the same thing. So here are couple of images of the Earth as seen by the Terrain Mapping camera (black & white)

First Picture: Northern Australia

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/chandrayaan/image1.jpg

Here is the corresponding view from google maps. The map needs to be rotated clockwise a few degrees to match the picture above.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=australia&sll=33.794992,-84.273836&sspn=0.010985,0.019312&g=8113+Paces+Park+Dr,+Decatur,+GA+30033&ie=UTF8&ll=-15.982454,145.195313&spn=12.986364,19.775391&z=6

Second picture - Southern Australia

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/chandrayaan/image2.jpg

Corresponding view from google maps. The map needs to be rotated clockwise a few degrees to match the picture above.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=australia&sll=33.794992,-84.273836&sspn=0.010985,0.019312&g=8113+Paces+Park+Dr,+Decatur,+GA+30033&ie=UTF8&ll=-35.675147,122.475586&spn=21.923832,39.550781&z=5

Article from ISRO

http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Oct31_2008.htm

Illusionist

October 31st, 2008, 07:33 PM

Wow... they really did listen to me.
i was gonna post those pics.
nice nice pics... makes me proud..

Licit Mortal

October 31st, 2008, 11:09 PM

Well, the greater minds @ ISRO have thought about the same thing. So here are couple of images of the Earth as seen by the Terrain Mapping camera (black & white)

First Picture: Northern Australia

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/chandrayaan/image1.jpg

Here is the corresponding view from google maps. The map needs to be rotated clockwise a few degrees to match the picture above.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=australia&sll=33.794992,-84.273836&sspn=0.010985,0.019312&g=8113+Paces+Park+Dr,+Decatur,+GA+30033&ie=UTF8&ll=-15.982454,145.195313&spn=12.986364,19.775391&z=6

Second picture - Southern Australia

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/chandrayaan/image2.jpg

Corresponding view from google maps. The map needs to be rotated clockwise a few degrees to match the picture above.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=australia&sll=33.794992,-84.273836&sspn=0.010985,0.019312&g=8113+Paces+Park+Dr,+Decatur,+GA+30033&ie=UTF8&ll=-35.675147,122.475586&spn=21.923832,39.550781&z=5

Article from ISRO

http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Oct31_2008.htm

WOWWWWWWWWWWW! The pictures are awesome and the clarity is unbelievable. Does anyone know why they chose black and white camera instead of a colored one? Does a color camera with the same resolution use more power or is it very expensive? A colored version would have made it easy for identifying all the geological features of the moon clearly.

cheers!

Fusionist

October 31st, 2008, 11:19 PM

amazing indeed ! I also wonder why it is not colour pics though

Illusionist

October 31st, 2008, 11:38 PM

WOWWWWWWWWWWW! The pictures are awesome and the clarity is unbelievable. Does anyone know why they chose black and white camera instead of a colored one? Does a color camera with the same resolution use more power or is it very expensive? A colored version would have made it easy for identifying all the geological features of the moon clearly.

cheers!

please brother do not quote those huge images. you can write your comment without quoting the images by just quoting the text. those images are huge and are messing up the formatting of the page.
gracias

Illusionist

October 31st, 2008, 11:54 PM

amazing indeed ! I also wonder why it is not colour pics though

taking images from space is different. even the mars rover took most of the pics in B/W. i dont know a lot about the complications but i know that they dont take pics the same way we do. they have to do lot of processing of the raw images based on the information included in the image files.
i guess they can make them color on the ground

check out the excerpt of this article . it explains a lot about imaging in space

Once the images are on the ground, scientists can look at them in the FITS ("Flexible Image Transport System") file format, a standard protocol used among astronomers. For analysis, most scientists use the data in this form—as grey-scale images representing light at different wavelengths.

To create an image suitable for public viewing, the scientists send the FITS files over to a public outreach team. Specialists on the team—who tend to be astronomers with graduate degrees and a passion for graphics and photography—begin the process of converting the information into the images sent out in press releases.

First, they put the image into a file format appropriate for media. That means that the data from the FITS files, which show a range of about 65,000 shades of grey, must be squeezed into a standard JPEG or TIFF file, with only 256 shades. This process is counterintuitively called "stretching" the data and must be done carefully to preserve important features and enhance details in the finished product.

Then each grey-scale image is assigned a color. In reality, each shot already represents a color—the wavelength of light captured by the filter when that picture was taken. But in some cases the images represent colors that we wouldn't be able to see. (The Spitzer, for example, registers the infrared spectrum.) To create a composite image that has the full range of colors seen by the human eye, an astronomer picks one image and makes it red, picks another and makes it blue, and completes the set by coloring a third image green. When he overlays the three images, one on top of the other, they produce a full-color picture. (Televisions and computer monitors create color in the same way.)

Sometimes the team assigns new colors even when the original pictures were taken in the visible spectrum. An object that would in real life comprise several indistinguishable shades of red might be represented to the public as the composite of three pictures in red, green, and blue. As a general rule, professional "visualizers" try to assign red to the image showing the longest wavelengths of light and blue to the one showing the shortest. (This parallels the relationship among the colors in the visible spectrum.)
http://www.slate.com/id/2120008/

barrykul

November 1st, 2008, 12:55 AM

In this article, EBN-4 has been reached.

Chandrayaan-1 camera goes operational (http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200811010369.htm)

The spacecraft is now circling the Earth in an orbit whose apogee(farthest point to Earth) lies at 2,67,000 km and perigee (nearest point to Earth) at 465 km. In this orbit, Chandrayaan-1 takes about six days to go round the Earth once.

harsh1802

November 1st, 2008, 01:53 AM

Well, the greater minds @ ISRO have thought about the same thing. So here are couple of images of the Earth as seen by the Terrain Mapping camera (black & white)[/URL]

Holy fuck!:eek2: Just wow......:bow:

Those are amazing pics......fuck.....i can't believe the clarity. :cheers:

Into_salem

November 1st, 2008, 02:49 AM

ISRO you are doing great. What a clarity ?. India is proud of you ISRO.

skganji

November 1st, 2008, 03:15 AM

Holy Cow !!. O my god, this is unbelievably amazing. I still cannot imagine that India has did some thing like this in my life time. ISRO has done a simply great work.

scdubagoor

November 1st, 2008, 06:40 AM

amazing indeed ! I also wonder why it is not colour pics though

Awesome Indeed. 5 meters/pixel is that right?

I guess colour doesn't provide any value addition for this specific mission. :)
and may be it lets them use very high compression techniques.

SarafIndian

November 1st, 2008, 03:17 PM

This is just awesome. Go isro go.. :banana:

Second picture - Southern Australia

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/chandrayaan/image2.jpg

rkramesh

November 1st, 2008, 10:17 PM

Gasp!!! :)

senthil1409

November 3rd, 2008, 04:07 PM

amazing indeed ! I also wonder why it is not colour pics though

WOWWWWWWWWWWW! The pictures are awesome and the clarity is unbelievable. Does anyone know why they chose black and white camera instead of a colored one? Does a color camera with the same resolution use more power or is it very expensive? A colored version would have made it easy for identifying all the geological features of the moon clearly.

cheers!

I have tried my best to give a simple explanation. I apologize if this does not make complete sense. Please post back if you have any questions.

Space Imaging (Remote Sensing) cameras work a little differently from the regular digital cameras we are used to. The camera onboard is a panchromatic camera (it is equally sensitive to all colors of light (colors in the rainbow)) and produces a true black and white image.

To produce a color image, the light that passes through the camera optics need to be split into the primary colors (blue, green and red). This has the following effect.

1. The spatial resolution ( 1 pixel = 5 meter) will go down (be reduced). Meaning: instead of 1 pixel representing 5m, it will be representing 10m or so. This means an object of size 100m will occupy only 10 pixels (10 m/ pixel x 10 pixel = 100m ) in color image, as opposed to 20pixels (5 m / pixel * 20 pixel = 100m ) in B & W image. In short, the number of spectra we listen to (detect with sensors) has an inverse relationship to spatial resolution.

2. The optics that are needed to split the light into multiple spectra (read colors) itself are complicated. This will make the whole camera much more expensive.

3. There is nothing on the moon, that is colorful like the earth. No trees, water, etc to have different colors. It is expected to have very little color differences, as seen in previous lunar pictures.

If you are interested in multispectral imaging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-spectral_image) I refer you to Wikipedia. See the spectral band section.

There are number of image processing techniques that can be used to give color to black and white images, based on information that we already know of the moon.

senthil1409

November 3rd, 2008, 04:18 PM

The final Earth Burn EBN), that will put the satellite close to the moon, will happen on Tue morning. This will take the satellite with 500 km of the moon and will the satellite will be slowed down by firing the LAM once again, when it gets closer to the moon, to be captured by the moon's gravity.

India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 will cruise closer to the moon early on Tuesday when it makes the transition from the earth's elliptical orbit into deeper space, a top space agency official said Monday.

"The liquid apogee motor (LAM) on board will be fired around 5.00 am on Tuesday for about five minutes to make the transition and position the spacecraft at about 500 km from the moon's surface and over 384,000 km away from the earth," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish said.

The complex manoeuvres will be carried out from the spacecraft's control room at ISRO's telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) in coordination with its deep space network (DSN) at Byalalu, about 40 km from Bangalore.

"Additional velocity will be given to the spacecraft to enter the lunar orbit Saturday (November 8) for a rendezvous with the moon. With calibrated firing of its LAMs, it will be inserted into its designated orbit, which will be about 100 km from the lunar surface," Satish said.

Chandrayaan-1 has been spinning around the earth in an elliptical orbit at 267,000 km apogee (farthest from earth) and 465 km perigee (nearest to earth) since October 29.

"In the present orbit, Chandrayaan has taken six days to go round the earth once. The spacecraft performance is being monitored closely and its health parameters are normal," Satish added.

Chandrayaan carries 11 scientific instruments, including six foreign payloads - two from the US, three from the European Space Agency (ESA) and one from Bulgaria. The other five are indigenously designed and developed by various centres of the state-run ISRO.

The spacecraft was launched October 22 on board the 316-tonne polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-C11) from the Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota spaceport off the Andhra Pradesh coast, about 80 km north of Tamil Nadu capital Chennai.

Source: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/chandrayaan1-to-get-within-500-km-of-moon-tuesday/77332-11.html

slashcruise

November 3rd, 2008, 08:39 PM

Chandrayaan’s Camera clicks pictures of Earth space

The Indian Space Research Organisation said on Friday that terrific shots of earth from space in black and white have been taken by the terrain mapping camera onboard India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1.

In a statement issued by the space agency it said, “The camera was operated through a series of commands from the spacecraft control centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)'s telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) here. The images were received by the deep space network (DSN) at Byalalu.”

The TMC took the first picture on 29th October at 8 a.m. from a height of 9,000 km, which displays the northern coast of Australia. After this, the second picture it took shows the southern coast of Australia, which was taken at 12:30 p.m. from a height of 70,000 km.

The statement added, “Analysis of the images conducted by Istrac's data centre confirmed excellent performance of the camera, one of the 11 scientific instruments onboard the spacecraft. The device has a resolution of five meters.”

The hyper spectral imager (HySI), lunar laser ranging instrument (LLRI), high energy x-ray spectrometre (HEX) and the moon impact probe (MIP), are the other four Indian payloads of Chandrayaan-1.

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), ESA (European Space Agency) and from Bulgaria are the providers of the remaining six payloads.

Making its way into the lunar orbit, Chandrayaan-I from past Wednesday had been orbiting around the earth at 267,000 km apogee (farthest from earth) and 465 km perigee (nearest to earth).

The statement added, “In this orbit, Chandrayaan takes about six days to go round the earth once. The spacecraft performance is being monitored and its health is normal.”

Fusionist

November 3rd, 2008, 08:57 PM

thanks for the explanation Senthil. Very informative indeed.

Licit Mortal

November 4th, 2008, 03:01 AM

I have tried my best to give a simple explanation. I apologize if this does not make complete sense. Please post back if you have any questions.

Space Imaging (Remote Sensing) cameras work a little differently from the regular digital cameras we are used to. The camera onboard is a panchromatic camera (it is equally sensitive to all colors of light (colors in the rainbow)) and produces a true black and white image.

To produce a color image, the light that passes through the camera optics need to be split into the primary colors (blue, green and red). This has the following effect.

1. The spatial resolution ( 1 pixel = 5 meter) will go down (be reduced). Meaning: instead of 1 pixel representing 5m, it will be representing 10m or so. This means an object of size 100m will occupy only 10 pixels (10 m/ pixel x 10 pixel = 100m ) in color image, as opposed to 20pixels (5 m / pixel * 20 pixel = 100m ) in B & W image. In short, the number of spectra we listen to (detect with sensors) has an inverse relationship to spatial resolution.

2. The optics that are needed to split the light into multiple spectra (read colors) itself are complicated. This will make the whole camera much more expensive.

3. There is nothing on the moon, that is colorful like the earth. No trees, water, etc to have different colors. It is expected to have very little color differences, as seen in previous lunar pictures.

If you are interested in multispectral imaging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-spectral_image) I refer you to Wikipedia. See the spectral band section.

There are number of image processing techniques that can be used to give color to black and white images, based on information that we already know of the moon.

Thank you very much, Senthil. It was really a complete and easily understandable information. :)

Illusionist

November 4th, 2008, 04:42 AM

Chandrayaan enters lunar space for final journey
http://www.sindhtoday.net/south-asia/33272.htm
Bangalore, Nov 4 (IANS) India’s first moon mission Chandrayaan-1 entered the lunar space early Tuesday for its final journey into the lunar orbit Saturday, an official of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

‘The operation to put Chandrayaan into lunar space went off very well. The complex manouvre was carried out around 5 a.m. by firing the liquid apogee motor (LAM) on board for about 150 seconds to place the unmanned spacecraft 380,000 km away from earth (apogee) and 1,000 km from the moon,’ ISRO director S. Satish told IANS.

The distance between earth and moon is about 384,000 km.

Preparations for the next major manouvre will begin soon to enable the spacecraft enters lunar orbit Nov 8 and positions itself about 100 km from the moon’s surface.

‘Chandrayaan has commenced its final journey towards the moon and will be inserted into the lunar orbit Saturday through complex manouvres from the space control centre of ISRO’s telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) here,’ Satish said.

Even as the spacecraft gets ready for its rendezvous with the moon, its terrain-mapping camera (TMC) will shoot pictures of the earth and moon orbiting in 380,000 km (apogee) by 1,000 km (perigee).

‘The images will be beamed to Istrac’s space centre through electrical signals for processing and developing into high resolution pictures of one-five metres,’ Satish added.

All functions on board the satellite are performing well and its health parameters are normal. It is also able to send and receive signals from ISRO’s deep space network (DSN) at Byalalu, about 40 km from here.

Chandrayaan is carrying 11 scientific instruments, including six foreign payloads - two from the US, three from the European Space Agency (ESA) and one from Bulgaria. The remaining five are indigenously designed and developed by various centres of the state-run ISRO.

The spacecraft was blasted off Oct 22 on board the 316 tonne polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-C11) from the Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota spaceport, about 80 km north of Chennai.

senthil1409

November 4th, 2008, 06:21 AM

Same information from ISRO

The fifth and final orbit raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was successfully carried out today (November 4, 2008) morning at 04:56 am IST. During this manoeuvre, the spacecraft’s 440 Newton liquid engine was fired for about two and a half minutes. With this, Chandrayaan-1 entered the Lunar Transfer Trajectory with an apogee (farthest point to Earth) of about 380,000 km (three lakh eighty thousand km).

The health of the spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore with support from Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) antennas at Byalalu. Since its launch on October 22 by PSLV-C11, all systems onboard Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft are performing normally. Chandrayaan-1 will approach the Moon on November 8, 2008 and the spacecraft’s liquid engine will be fired again to insert the spacecraft into lunar orbit.

Source: http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Nov04_2008.htm

Illusionist

November 4th, 2008, 06:56 AM

its the last leg of the journey. it will be transferred in to lunar orbit on nov 8th.
lets pray for the best.

sanjupalayat

November 5th, 2008, 10:30 AM

Any latest updates.............

Illusionist

November 5th, 2008, 05:53 PM

the most important update will come on Nov 8th when CY enters moon orbit. untill then i doubt we wll get any more updates. may be some pics of moon will be released by ISRO.
lets wait and see

barrykul

November 6th, 2008, 07:30 AM

http://www.hindu.com/seta/2008/11/06/images/2008110650031401.jpg

How Chandrayaan-1 will help compile a 3D atlas (http://www.hindu.com/seta/2008/11/06/stories/2008110650031400.htm)

The Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) on-board Chandrayaan-1 is a unique demonstration of space scientists’ ingenuity. It will be able to produce a 3D atlas of the moon using a single camera. The resolution will be 5 metres. This will help to prepare a 3D atlas with a unprecedented high-resolution.
Developed indigenously

Developed by the Ahmedabad based Space Applications Centre, the TMC will be able to image the moon’s surface from three directions — vertically down view, forward view and backward view along the path of the spacecraft’s orbit. The three view imaging feature of TMC is the first among ISRO’s remote sensing payloads.

“The three different views become possible as the camera picks up data from three different angles,” said Dr. Kiran Kumar A.S., Deputy Director, Sensor Development Area, Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad. “The three images are picked up simultaneously from three different angles by the Terrain Mapping Camera.”

The data will enable the preparation of a three dimensional lunar atlas. For 3D information, at least 2 views of the region from different angles are required.
Overcoming occlusion

The three views of TMC will ensure that regions on slope where the viewing angle is smaller than the slope is not occluded, as the image of the slope will be available by the third view.

One would normally need three cameras to image a feature simultaneously from three different angles. So how does the Terrain Imaging Camera manage to do it with just one camera?

“It is due to the innovative design of the camera,” Dr. Kumar said. “A set of two mirrors in the camera are used to provide two angles apart from the nadir [view from the top] view.”

While a normal camera of four mega pixels would have 2,000 by 2,000 elements, the Terrain Mapping Camera does not capture data the same way. “We don’t get one frame at a time but one single line,” he said.

The 4,000 pixels (1 pixel covers an area of 5 metre x 5 metre from a height of 100 km from the moon) in the Terrain Mapping Camera are arranged in a linear manner. While the spacecraft moves in north-south polar orbit, the camera covers a width of 20 km in an east-west direction.
The swath

Hence the area covered in an instant is 5 m x 20 km (4,000 by 5 metres). This is called the swath. “We can map 4,000 elements by 5 metres (20 km swath) in one instant and the next moment we move to cover another 5 metres,” Dr. Kumar explained. An area of 1.5 km of the moon is imaged in one second.

All the three views generate a 2-D image, as each view covers north-south and east-west directions (X, Y directions). And a 3-D view of a point can be generated by combining the 2-D data by using data from any of the two views.

Since the three views of the camera are in the same direction of the spacecraft movement, a point lying in the path of the orbit is covered by all the three views. “Combining all the 3 views provides more details and takes care of the occlusion problem,” said A Roy Chowdhury, Head, Geo & Planetary Sensor Electronics Division and Instrument Scientist TMC & HySI, Chandrayaan-1 at Space Applications Centre.

The spacecraft will take nearly two hours to complete one north-south polar orbit. But the moon will not be imaged continuously for the full two hours of the orbit.

The solar illumination changes as the moon moves in its orbit. So the imaging time is limited to minimise the variation of illumination conditions.
Prime imaging period

Limiting the solar aspect angle to 30 degrees on either side of the equator will result in a prime imaging period of just 60 days in six months.

“We will get two slots of 60 days each in a year. We will pick up data during these two slots,” said Dr. Kumar.

So this results “in imaging for only 20 minutes per six visible orbits from the Indian ground station to cover the whole moon.”

The area covered during 20 minutes of imaging will be 1,800 km (1.5 km will be imaged in a second).

These are some of the reasons why the mission period is two years though imaging the moon can theoretically be completed in 28 days — the time taken by the moon to complete one rotation.

The camera has four exposure settings and this lets the camera record data from areas not well illuminated by the sun, particularly those lying in higher latitudes up to the poles.

While increasing the exposure time would allow imaging the less lit areas, the spacecraft will be moving during such long exposures. This will result in coarser resolution of the images.

The 3D atlas with a unprecedented high resolution will help in better understanding of the moon’s evolution process.

It will also help researchers to identify regions of the moon for detailed study. The images will also “be an important input for analysing data from other scientific instruments on Chandrayaan-1.

barrykul

November 6th, 2008, 07:32 AM

Chandrayaan takes pictures of moon (http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/06/stories/2008110651691300.htm)

The Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) on board Chandrayaan-1 has started taking pictures of the moon. On Tuesday evening, 11/4/08, when the spacecraft was in the lunar transfer orbit, it photographed the crescent moon from a distance of some 2.5 lakh km.

The TMC took pictures of the earth when it was made operational on October 29. The pictures showed the northern and southern coasts of Australia.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) performed the fifth and final orbit-raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 early Tuesday morning, which put the spacecraft in the lunar transfer orbit. In the evening, the TMC, one of its 11 scientific instruments, took images of the moon.

M. Annadurai, Project Director, Chandrayaan-1, said: “The pictures were taken when the spacecraft was more than 2.5 lakh km away from the moon. We did again the entire chain of tests of the 11 instruments, data handling, data storage, downlinking, radio frequency and so on.”

Chandrayaan-1 will reach the moon’s vicinity on November 8. According to ISRO’s present plans, the spacecraft will be lowered into its final orbit on November 15, in which it will go round the moon at an altitude of 100 km.

barrykul

November 6th, 2008, 07:42 AM

Nice Color Brochure Picture
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/images/20081121252300701.jpg

Into_salem

November 8th, 2008, 01:26 AM

Crucial Chandrayaan manoeuvre today (http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/08/stories/2008110860851500.htm)

To enable the satellite to be completely captured by the moon, and thereby make the earth’s gravity irrelevant, the satellite would have to be slowed down. And this important operation will be performed when it is about 500 km from the moon, above the lunar north-pole. This is expected to occur around 1730 hrs on Saturday. At this point, the satellite’s orientation will actually be earth-facing. Also, significantly, the orbit will no longer be a closed elliptic one; it becomes an open hyperbolic one. So, if velocity reduction is not achieved at the designated time, the satellite will escape from moon’s gravity and be irretrievably lost in space. Thus, this operation is extremely crucial.

slashcruise

November 8th, 2008, 11:17 AM

Chandrayaan to enter lunar orbit on Saturday evening

MUMBAI: Saturday evening would mark the D-day for India’s prestigious Rs 386-crore moon mission, Chandrayaan-1 , when the tricky lunar orbit
insertion (LOI) takes place – expectedly between 5 pm and 6 pm. The success of the moon mission, which lifted off on October 22, depends on this.

According to space experts, LOI is not without danger because it means traversing through an area in which the gravitational forces of the earth and moon nearly cancel each other out. Consequently, even a small deviation could send the spacecraft into a crash course towards the moon or earth – or on a path leading into deep space. Experts recall that about 30% of unmanned moon missions of the US and the former Soviet Union failed during an LOI.

On the eve of Chandrayaan’s LOI, an Isro official said: “Despite the challenging manouevre on Saturday, the professionalism of scientists and engineers makes us approach the task with optimism , although I admit to a feeling of nervous apprehension . It will be a test for everyone , including the deep space network at Byalalu and the electronic brain of the Chandrayaan spacecraft,’’ he said.

He said the main challenge before LOI was targetting the spacecraft accurately to pass near the moon on Saturday at a “safe’ ’ distance of a few hundred kilometres. The distance between the earth and the moon is 3,86,000 km. “At that distance, it will be a big challenge for us to track the spacecraft, because the moon itself will be moving around the earth at the speed of 3,600 km per hour,’’ he said. It will take about 1.3 seconds for a signal to travel from Isro’s command network at Bangalore to Chandrayaan.

Other Isro officials said that during an LOI, the orientation of the sp

Euromast

November 8th, 2008, 02:24 PM

Chandrayaan-1 successfully enters Moon orbit

India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 successfully entered moon orbit on Saturday. With this development, India's moon mission has been declared successful.

When India's first mission to the moon took off nearly a fortnight ago, there was both joy and anxiety. There was joy because the mission put India in an exclusive club of countries.

Though scientists rejoiced as the Chandrayaan blasted off, they knew they had a tougher job at hand, to put the satellite in moon's orbit. That happened on Saturday evening and the mission was declared a success.

Indian scientists were worried because the last part of Chandrayaan's journey was dangerous, as it had to go through an area in which the gravitational forces of the earth and moon nearly cancel each other out. Even a small deviation could have sent the spacecraft into a crash course towards the earth or on a path leading into deep space, but everything went according to plan.

When the spacecraft was about 500 km short of the moon, it was to be slowed down. The moon's gravity would then pull the craft into its orbit. Later, it would be stabilised in a 100 km circular orbit.

NDTV

barrykul

November 8th, 2008, 06:47 PM

Here are some more details...

"The liquid apogee motor on board the spacecraft was fired for about 805 seconds to put Chandrayaan-1 into an elliptical orbit with 7,500 km aposelene (farthest from moon) and 500 km pericelene (nearest to moon)," ISRO director S. Satish told IANS

ISRO scientists at the Mission Control Centre near here fired the spacecraft's liquid engine at 1651 hours for a duration of 817 seconds in a hit or miss Lunar Orbit Insertion(LOI) operation in the maiden moon mission, 18 days after it was launched from Sriharikota spaceport.

The spacecraft is now orbiting the moon in an elliptical orbit that passes over the polar regions of the moon. The nearest point of this orbit (perilune) lies at a distance of about 504 kms from the moon's surface, while the farthest point (apolune) lies at about 7,502 km.

"For the last 20 minutes, almost all our hearts were at a standstill," Nair said immediately after the the chaallenging manoeuvre was carried out.

Nobody else in the world perhaps would have got such a precise lunar orbit as India did in the first attempt, Nair said. Experts recall that about 30 per cent of unamnned moon missions of the US and former Soviet Union failed during LOI phase. The achievement goes to the credit of ISRO, which has demonstrated its knowledge base in carrying out long trajectories under the influence of multiple bodies. "We (India) now have a big leadership as far as space is concerned", he said.

Nair said the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) on board Chandrayaan-1 would be released to hit the lunar surface around November 15. "Thereafter, systems (on board Chandrayaan-1) would be switched on one-by-one".

Illusionist

November 8th, 2008, 08:33 PM

Congrats to ISRO and all Indians...

here it the news item from isro.org
Chandrayaan-1, India’s first unmanned spacecraft mission to moon, entered lunar orbit today (November 8, 2008). This is the first time that an Indian built spacecraft has broken away from the Earth’s gravitational field and reached the moon. This historic event occurred following the firing of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft’s liquid engine at 16:51 IST for a duration of 817 seconds. The highly complex ‘lunar orbit insertion manoeuvre’ was performed from Chandrayaan-1 Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network at Bangalore.

Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu supported the crucial task of transmitting commands and continuously monitoring this vital event with two dish antennas, one measuring 18 m and the other 32 m.

Chandrayaan-1’s liquid engine was fired when the spacecraft passed at a distance of about 500 km from the moon to reduce its velocity to enable lunar gravity to capture it into an orbit around the moon. The spacecraft is now orbiting the moon in an elliptical orbit that passes over the polar regions of the moon. The nearest point of this orbit (periselene) lies at a distance of about 504 km from the moon’s surface while the farthest point (aposelene) lies at about 7502 km. Chandrayaan-1 takes about 11 hours to go round the moon once in this orbit.

The performance of all the systems onboard Chandrayaan-1 is normal. In the coming days, the height of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft’s orbit around the moon will be carefully reduced in steps to achieve a final polar orbit of about 100 km height from the moon’s surface. Following this, the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) of the spacecraft will be released to hit the lunar surface. Later, the other scientific instruments will be turned ON sequentially leading to the normal phase of the mission.

It may be recalled that Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was launched on October 22, 2008 by PSLV-C11 from India’s spaceport at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. As intended, PSLV placed the spacecraft in a highly oval shaped orbit with a perigee (nearest point to Earth) of 255 km and an apogee (farthest point to Earth) of 22,860 km. In the past two weeks, the liquid engine of Chandrayaan-1 has been successfully fired five times at opportune moments to increase the apogee height, first to 37,900 km, then to 74,715 km, later to 164,600 km, after that to 267,000 km and finally to 380,000km, as planned. During this period, the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC), one of the eleven payloads (scientific instruments) of the spacecraft, was successfully operated twice to take the pictures, first of the Earth, and then moon.

With today’s successful manoeuvre, India becomes the fifth country to send a spacecraft to Moon. The other countries, which have sent spacecraft to Moon, are the United States, former Soviet Union, Japan and China. Besides, the European Space Agency (ESA), a consortium of 17 countries, has also sent a spacecraft to moon.

Illusionist

November 9th, 2008, 03:42 AM

A TV grab of the Moon sent by Chandrayaan-1 on November 4.
source : hindu
http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/09/images/2008110960640101.jpg
source: Telegraph India
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081109/images/09zzchandrayan2big.jpg

Arul Murugan

November 9th, 2008, 05:15 AM

This is divine part.....

INVOKING DIVINE INTERVENTION

Prayer at Moon temple for Chandrayaan

V Mayilvaganan | TNN

Thanjavur: Chandrayaan may be pure science. But people in this small village called Thingalur, near Tiruvaiyar, 20 kilometres from Thanjavur are not willing to take any chances. They performed special poojas at the temple, dedicated to Chandra Bhagavan (Moon god), praying for the success of Chandrayaan’s entry into the Moon’s orbit on Saturday. And, when news flashed on television channels about Chandrayaan”s entry into the moon orbit, Thingalur and the temple priests cheered the hardest.
“The scientists have trust in science and their skill. We have trust in the Almighty,” said V Kannan, an official of the temple on the rationale behind seeking the God’s blessing for Chandrayaan’s success, the result of several years’ of effort by scientists. “We do not undermine the abilities of our scientists. It is really a big achievement and a great honour for our country. But the Almighty is above science,” he pointed out.
The priests of the temple in the Sri Kailasanathar Temple, where a shrine dedicated to Lord Chandran is located, conducted special poojas invoking his blessings for safety and successful completion of the moon mission. Nowhere else in the state is there an exclusive temple for Chandran. Similar prayers were also conducted a fortnight ago when Chandrayaan took off from Sriharikota. In the evening, when the news of the spacecraft successfully entering the moon’s orbit reached the temple officials and priests, they cheered along with scientists at the ISRO.
According to legend, Chandran had been struck by a debilitating illness. It was after Chandran offered prayers to Lord Kailasanathar at the Thingalur temple that he was saved from the fatal disease. In turn he was ordered by Lord Shiva to remain in the temple and give relief to all those suffering from diseases. Hence, people who are ill and those affected by adverse position of Chandran in their horoscope offer prayers in the temple.

From TOI

barrykul

November 9th, 2008, 10:43 PM

Chandrayaan: orbital height reduced (http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/10/stories/2008111050360100.htm)

CHENNAI: After successfully accomplishing the most crucial and tricky manoeuvre of safely inserting Chandrayaan-1 into the lunar orbit on Saturday, the Indian Space Research Organisation on Sunday executed the first manoeuvre of reducing the orbital height of the spacecraft around the moon. While on Saturday, Chandrayaan-1 reached the lunar orbit with an aposelene (farthest point from the moon) of 7,502 km and a periselene (nearest point from the moon) of 504 km, the periselene was reduced to 200 km on Sunday. The aposelene continues at 7,500 km. The periselene was reduced by giving commands to the engine on board Chandrayaan-1 to fire for about a minute from 8.03 p.m.
More manoeuvres

Three more manoeuvres of reducing both the aposelene and periselene will be done in the coming days. This includes the manoeuvre of putting Chandrayaan-1 in the final circular orbit of 100 km above the moon on November 15. After this is done, ISRO will command the spacecraft to eject its Moon Impact Probe on the same day.

The Moon Impact Probe, with the Indian flag painted on its sides, will crash-land on the moon.

Then the remaining 10 scientific instruments will be switched on, one after another.

The Terrain Mapping Camera, an Indian scientific instrument, has already been switched on. It has taken clear pictures of the earth and the moon.

Illusionist

November 10th, 2008, 08:37 AM

First Lunar Orbit Reduction Manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 Successfully Carried Out
http://isro.org/pressrelease/Nov10_2008.htm
November 10, 2008

The first orbit reduction manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft which is orbiting the moon, was successfully performed yesterday (November 9, 2008) night. As part of that manoeuvre which began at 20:03 IST, the 440 Newton liquid engine of the spacecraft was fired for about 57 seconds. With this, the nearest point of Chandrayaan-1’s orbit (periselene) from the moon’s surface was reduced from 504 km to 200 km while the farthest point (aposelene) remained unchanged at 7,502 km. In this elliptical orbit, Chandrayaan-1 takes about ten and a half hours to circle the moon once.

It may be recalled that the lunar orbit insertion manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 was successfully performed on November 8, 2008 and the spacecraft entered into an orbit around the moon with a periselene of 504 km and an aposelene of 7,502 km.

The health as well as the orbit of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is being closely monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore with crucial support from Indian Deep Space Network antennas at Byalalu. The spacecraft performance is normal.

Further orbit reduction manoeuvres are scheduled in the coming days to take Chandrayaan-1 to its final operational orbit of 100 km height from the lunar surface. After this, the Moon Impact Probe, one of the eleven scientific instruments (payloads) of Chandrayaan-1, will be released to hit the moon’s surface.

Into_salem

November 10th, 2008, 09:23 AM

^^ Nice Explanation. Thanks. BTW why can't the final LO at 50km/50km or less instead of 100Km/100Km. Any specific reason.

Prashasth

November 10th, 2008, 01:21 PM

^^
Well, maybe that could be the least possible distance before any object is sucked into the gravitational field of the moon ?

Into_salem

November 10th, 2008, 01:31 PM

^^ Seems logical. Thanks

scdubagoor

November 10th, 2008, 03:08 PM

^^ Nice Explanation. Thanks. BTW why can't the final LO at 50km/50km or less instead of 100Km/100Km. Any specific reason.

INTERESTING FACT:

For orbits around the Moon or Planets , the necessary orbital speed varies
in accordance with the orbital height above the surface, and, with the
mass of the Moon or Planet. The bigger the planetary mass, the higher the
speed needed to remain in orbit. The higher the orbital altitude , the
lower the speed required to maintain that orbit. Typical figures are :-

...........................................Velecocity (Kms/sec)
Height(Kms)####Moon####Mars####Earth####Jupiter
250..................1.57.........3.43........ 7.75.........42.05
1000..................1.34.........3.12.........7.35........41.83
10000..................0.65........1.79.........4.93........39.45

Source: ftp://ftp.amsat.org/amsat/articles/satgen/sgen315.txt

Into_salem

November 10th, 2008, 06:59 PM

INTERESTING FACT:

For orbits around the Moon or Planets , the necessary orbital speed varies
in accordance with the orbital height above the surface, and, with the
mass of the Moon or Planet. The bigger the planetary mass, the higher the
speed needed to remain in orbit. The higher the orbital altitude , the
lower the speed required to maintain that orbit. Typical figures are :-

...........................................Velecocity (Kms/sec)
Height(Kms)####Moon####Mars####Earth####Jupiter
250..................1.57.........3.43........ 7.75.........42.05
1000..................1.34.........3.12.........7.35........41.83
10000..................0.65........1.79.........4.93........39.45

Source: ftp://ftp.amsat.org/amsat/articles/satgen/sgen315.txt

That sums up clearly. Thanks scdubagoor

barrykul

November 11th, 2008, 06:40 AM

Chandrayaan nudged closer to moon (http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Chandrayaan+nudged+closer+to+moon&artid=nVg5Si0opi0=&SectionID=b7ziAYMenjw=&MainSectionID=b7ziAYMenjw=&SEO=Chandrayaan,+moon+mission,+ISRO&SectionName=pWehHe7IsSU=)

BANGALORE: India's first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan-I was nudged closer to the moon late Monday in a second orbit-reduction manoeuvre, a top Indian space official said.

The manoeuvre lasted 866 seconds.

"The spacecraft is at 187 km from the moon (periselene) and 255 km away (aposelene), orbiting elliptically once in every 2 hours and 16 minutes over the polar regions of the lunar planet," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish told IANS.

The liquid engine onboard the spacecraft was remotely fired for 14.4 minutes from 9.58 p.m. to 22.12 p.m. IST by the ISRO scientists from the spacecraft control centre at its telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) here.

The space agency's deep space network (DSN) at Byalalu, about 40 km from India's tech hub, coordinated the complex manoeuvre with the support of ground stations. Signals to and from the spacecraft were excellent, the official said.

"The complex exercise enabled Chandrayaan to move swiftly from 7,500 km aposelene late Sunday to 255 km, which is a remarkable feat. All sub-systems and instruments onboard are functioning satisfactorily," Satish said.

The scientists also observed the motion of the spacecraft after the manoeuvre for a short distance to extrapolate its orbital path.

Chandrayaan-I will undergo two more orbit-lowering manoeuvres over the next two days to enter into its designated slot of 100 x 100km from the lunar surface for a two-year rendezvous with the moon.

ISRO plans to eject the moon impact probe Nov 14-15 from the spacecraft and crash it onto the lunar surface at a designated area, where the Indian tri-colour will be 'hoisted'.

Chandrayaan carries 11 scientific instruments, including six foreign payloads-two from the US, three from the European Space Agency (ESA) and one from Bulgaria. The remaining five are indigenously designed and developed by various centres of the state-run ISRO.

The spacecraft was blasted off Oct 22 onboard the 316-tonne Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C11) from the Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota spaceport, about 80 km north of Chennai.

senthil1409

November 11th, 2008, 03:46 PM

Moon as viewed from a distance of 311200 Km. Taken on Nov 4th. We were reading all about this in the media, without any picture. Here it is now. I wonder what took ISRO a longer time than usual?

http://isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/imagesfromchandrayaan/Moon_Enh.jpg

barrykul

November 11th, 2008, 05:57 PM

Chandrayaan-1 gets further closer to moon (http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/000200811112031.htm)

Bangalore (PTI): Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft on Tuesday moved closer to the Moon with ISRO scientists carrying out orbit reduction manoeuvre at 18:30 hours for a duration of 31 seconds.

"The current orbit of Chandrayaan-1 is 255.3 km (the farthest distance from the moon) X 101.3 km (nearest distance to the moon). The orbital period is 2.09 hours", ISRO spokesperson S Satish told PTI.

Further manoeuvres are planned in the coming days to bring the spacecraft to its final circular orbit of 100 kms above the moon's surface, Satish said.

Arasu

November 11th, 2008, 06:20 PM

A great achievement by Indian scientists and a proud moment for all its citizens.

Illusionist

November 11th, 2008, 06:30 PM

wow finally an image of moon from chandrayaan. I wonder why is it not so clear. is it the distance from which it is taken or something else?
hope to see more pics from cy soon.

senthil1409

November 11th, 2008, 08:57 PM

Yeah, the picture was taken 311200Km from the moon, when the spacecraft was leaving earth's gravity.

Into_salem

November 12th, 2008, 12:02 AM

CHENNAI: One more firing of the engine on board Chandrayaan-1 on Tuesday evening reduced its periselene (nearest distance to the moon) from 187 km to 101 km. The firing of the engine lasted 31 seconds from 6.30 p.m.

The spacecraft has now an aposelene (farthest distance from the moon) of 255 km and a periselene of 101 km. In this orbit, Chandrayaan-1, takes two hours and nine minutes to go round the moon once.

All sub-systems on board the spacecraft were working well, a spokesman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said from Bangalore.

On Wednesday evening, the Spacecraft Control Centre (SCC) at Bangalore will issue commands to the spacecraft’s engine, called the Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM), for reducing its aposelene from 255 km to 100 km. (It is powered by liquid propellants). When it is done successfully, the spacecraft will be in its final circular orbit of 100 km above the moon.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/12/stories/2008111261331200.htm

Fusionist

November 12th, 2008, 12:19 AM

a look back and a better launch video..

na_EzQocdYU&NR

ps. the DD camera man need to be sacked and these noobs be given the job.. atleast they had better commonsense.

Into_salem

November 12th, 2008, 01:30 AM

^^Though coverage was nice, It looks the launch was a failure. What was this project.

Illusionist

November 12th, 2008, 02:16 AM

It is not a failure. it is PSLV which delivered chandrayaan.
if you thought that the rocket was falling then it is just an illusion, it is infact making a turn to change the trajectory.

Sridhar

November 12th, 2008, 02:46 AM

Into_Salem,

I can see why you might think this was a failure... it may appear that the vehicle is not going straight up. But the fact is that because the earth is curved, the trajectory for the vehicle is also not vertically upwards. Most spacecraft are injected in an elliptical (sometimes circular or near-circular) orbit by the launch vehicle. Look at the launch videos of any launcher and they will look like this.

Fusionist,

There was no video by DD cameramen. There were ISRO static and tracking cameras that were used in the DD feed. The tracking camera automatically tracked the vessel - when it was obscured by clouds, it continued to track the vehicle so that when it broke out of the low clouds, the camera was there to capture it. There was no human involved and the cameras were programmed well in advance. They could have positioned a cameraman on the mainland to capture a long-shot view of the launch, but in good weather, the ISRO cameras capture the launch much better.

Sridhar

November 12th, 2008, 03:00 AM

BTW, ISRO should learn how to name missions better in future. Instead of CY, it could have named the series as "Soma". Easier for everyone around the world to pronounce and remember and equally descriptive of the mission. The Soviet lunar missions were simply named Luna with a numeric suffix. Apollo is similarly easy to pronounce and remember. The name for the ISRO satellite that will study the Sun is Aditya - better than Chandrayaan. Could have been crisper (why not Surya, for instance) but will do.

KB335ci2

November 12th, 2008, 04:31 AM

Surya = 'Sun'.

Fusionist

November 12th, 2008, 04:51 AM

There was no video by DD cameramen. There were ISRO static and tracking cameras that were used in the DD feed. The tracking camera automatically tracked the vessel - when it was obscured by clouds, it continued to track the vehicle so that when it broke out of the low clouds, the camera was there to capture it. There was no human involved and the cameras were programmed well in advance. They could have positioned a cameraman on the mainland to capture a long-shot view of the launch, but in good weather, the ISRO cameras capture the launch much better.

1. DD does the packaging of the programme. I was not impressed by the way DD times the launch, the live footage came in only about 20/30 seconds before launch. They should have had live footage for atleast 2 mins prior to launch.

2. ISRO might do the camera, but my problem was with the on-line editing, be it ISRO or DD. They chose to show the smoke left behind by the PSLV near ground level rather than following the PSLV after it made its appearance from above the clouds ( as done by the amateur film makers ). Obviously PSLV was visible for atleast a minute after it made it past the low clouds.

They have had enough launces to practice, this was a golden moment and they video coverage simply didnt rise up to the expectations.

Prashasth

November 12th, 2008, 12:23 PM

I concur with you Sridhar ... In fact, just 'Chandra' would have sufficed. There was no need give a literal name to vehicle ('yaan'), its always understood .. isn't it ?

Into_salem

November 12th, 2008, 12:47 PM

Thank you Indrajal and Sridhar. I got fooled by the trajectory. Thanks for the useful info.

2Paise

November 12th, 2008, 12:51 PM

a look back and a better launch video..

na_EzQocdYU&NR

ps. the DD camera man need to be sacked and these noobs be given the job.. atleast they had better commonsense.

Excellent find!

As for the name, i think we should cook up even more unpronounceable names just to keep the Russians and Chinese intimidated:lol:

scdubagoor

November 12th, 2008, 03:01 PM

1. DD does the packaging of the programme. I was not impressed by the way DD times the launch, the live footage came in only about 20/30 seconds before launch. They should have had live footage for atleast 2 mins prior to launch.

2. ISRO might do the camera, but my problem was with the on-line editing, be it ISRO or DD. They chose to show the smoke left behind by the PSLV near ground level rather than following the PSLV after it made its appearance from above the clouds ( as done by the amateur film makers ). Obviously PSLV was visible for atleast a minute after it made it past the low clouds.

They have had enough launces to practice, this was a golden moment and they video coverage simply didnt rise up to the expectations.

Good Video
----
I think they got used to PSLV's success :)

BTW, does ISRO/DRDO/Airforce have cameras that track the vehicle all the way upto outerspace like NASA/Pentagon has. Sridhar/anyone?

senthil1409

November 12th, 2008, 03:40 PM

Today, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has successfully reached its intended operational orbit at a height of about 100 km from the lunar surface. This followed a series of three orbit reduction manoeuvres conducted during the past three days by repeatedly firing the spacecraft’s 440 Newton Liquid Engine. As part of these manoeuvres, the engine was fired for a cumulative duration of about sixteen minutes. As a result of these manoeuvres, the farthest point of Chandrayaan-1’s orbit (aposelene) from the moon’s surface was first reduced from 7,502 km to 255 km and finally to 100 km while the nearest point (periselene) was reduced from 200 km to 182 km and finally to 100 km.

With this, the carefully planned complex sequence of operations to carry Chandrayaan-1 from its initial Earth orbit to its intended operational lunar orbit with the use of its liquid engine has been successfully completed. During these operations, Chandrayaan-1’s liquid engine built by Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), Thiruvananthapuram, has been fired a total of ten times successfully. In its present operational orbit, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft takes about two hours to go round the moon once.

From this operational circular orbit of about 100 km height passing over the polar regions of the moon, it is intended to conduct chemical, mineralogical and photo geological mapping of the moon with Chandrayaan-1’s 11 scientific instruments (payloads). Two of those 11 payloads – Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM) – have already been successfully switched ON. TMC has successfully taken the pictures of Earth and moon.

The next major event of Chandrayaan-1 mission planned in the coming days is the release of Moon Impact Probe (MIP) from the spacecraft and its eventual hitting of the moon’s surface.

It may be recalled that after its successful launch by PSLV-C11 on October 22 into an initial Earth orbit, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft proceeded towards moon and successfully entered into an elliptical orbit around that celestial body on November 8, 2008. Since its launch, the spacecraft’s health and orbit have been continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) with critical support from antennas of Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu.
Source: http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Nov12_2008.htm

Prashasth

November 12th, 2008, 03:55 PM

^^

That's fantastic news !! ... Hurrah !! .. We can shortly see Indian Flag on the moon ... :banana:

Fusionist

November 12th, 2008, 04:21 PM

Excellent find!

As for the name, i think we should cook up even more unpronounceable names just to keep the Russians and Chinese intimidated:lol:

For that you need to consult the DMK govt. They might probably come up with something like 'santhiramandala tholaithodar vannavoorthi - ilakkam 1' or something like that :lol:

Into_salem

November 12th, 2008, 04:42 PM

^^^^ If MK sees your comments, you could be inducted into DMK's cabinet.

Into_salem

November 12th, 2008, 04:44 PM

Source: http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Nov12_2008.htm

That's a great. Let us see our flag on the moon on 14th or sooner.

Into_salem

November 12th, 2008, 04:47 PM

Anyone knows, how long Apollo-11 took to reach the moon's orbit ?

Illusionist

November 12th, 2008, 04:54 PM

Congrats. now our mission to moon is complete as it reached the intended orbital home.
we can call "going to moon" as a successful mission. doing experiments is second part of moon research.

skdubai

November 12th, 2008, 07:30 PM

^^Which should be the easy part after the LOI!!

ImBoredNow

November 12th, 2008, 09:47 PM

^^ Better yet they should've appropriately named it Chanda I.

slashcruise

November 12th, 2008, 10:14 PM

Chandrayaan-I reaches its final resting orbit

BANGALORE: India's unmanned lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 on Wednesday successfully entered the operational lunar orbit after ISRO scientists
carried out final orbit reduction manoeuvre, lasting one minute. ( Watch )

The craft is now at a circular orbit of 102 km above the moon's surface, ISRO spokesperson S Satish said.

It is expected to be trimmed to 100 km — the final circular orbit of Chandrayaan-1 — tomorrow, he said.

On November 9, India became the fifth member of the global moon club with Chandrayaan-1 entering the lunar orbit at 5.04 pm (IST). The other four members are the US, Russia (former Soviet Union), Japan, China and members of European Space Agency (ESA).

According to Isro officials, Chandrayaan's liquid engine was fired for 817 seconds when the spacecraft passed at a distance of about 500 km from the moon to reduce its velocity to enable the lunar gravity to capture it around the moon. Chandrayaan's speed was reduced to 366 metres per second when it flew into the moon's orbit.

Experts said it was a significant feat because India's moonshot was successful in the very first attempt — something that even major space powers like the US and Russia could not achieve. The man who launched the Indian moon mission, Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, had said, "It's undoubtedly a great moment for India because nearly 50% of the moon missions of other countries have not been successful."

Chandrayaan-1, the two-year Rs 386 crore Indian moon mission launched from Sriharikota on October 22, will draw a three-dimensional map of the moon, carrying out its chemical mapping and hunting for water or ice.

Kasturirangan said the lunar orbit insertion (LOI) was a nail-biting moment because two objects — the moon and Chandrayaan — moving at a high speed had to have a successful rendezvous. At a certain point, the gravity of moon and that of earth cancel each other out, making LOI very challenging.

Sridhar

November 12th, 2008, 10:49 PM

Scdubagoor: AFAIK, there is no tracking of any launch until satellite ejection. Some launches have a camera on board the launcher itself, but ISRO does not do that. It would be nice if they did.

Into_Salem: The Apollo-11 missions involved a direct transit to lunar orbit - i.e. there were two stages of the mission - transit to lunar orbit, followed by a deorbit and landing of the lunar module on the moon's surface. This took a total of about 3 days from launch to lunar orbit. But that required the most massive launchers ever built - the Saturn 3. That made sense for the manned lunar missions, where minimizing the transit time made sense (less endurance in space, less chances for errors and less supplies needed).

The Chandrayaan mission used a more efficient strategy to reach the moon, with multiple intermediate orbits before it reached lunar orbit. This allowed a medium-sized launcher like the PSLV-XL to send a relatively heavy lunar satellite (wrt other lunar missions) all the way to the moon. The strategy also gave an opportunity for ISRO, which has zero experience beyond earth's orbit of operations in deep space, where even the slightest inaccuracy of an engine firing can send the spacecraft way off target. The multi-stage operations allowed it to gain experience and confidence with each successive orbit raising maneuver. Hence the choice of this strategy.

Sridhar

November 12th, 2008, 11:12 PM

Hearty congratulations to ISRO for putting the first Indian-made object in orbit around another heavenly body.

Now, looking forward to the MIP experiment - where an Indian-made object will reach the moon's surface and plant the Indian flag there.

MachuPichu

November 12th, 2008, 11:32 PM

kronik

November 13th, 2008, 05:07 AM

I am so used to mechanically going to the different sector threads that I didn't even notice the Chandrayaan's thread and I made lots of additions there, to find some of them have been reported already. He he, I apologize for that.

Do check this out:

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/images/ChandrayaanFlash.swf

Illusionist

November 13th, 2008, 08:41 PM

Tricolour has a date with moon tonight

MUMBAI: If things go as planned, the Indian tricolour will mark its presence on the moon tonight (around 8.30pm IST) after having flown
3,86,000km from the earth. The timing of this proud moment has been specially designed to coincide with Children's Day.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and the European Space Agency comprising 17 countries already have their flags on the moon.

The Indian tricolour is painted on all sides of the 29-kg Moon Impact Probe which is attached to the main orbiting spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1, which was launched on October 22.

The inclusion of the MIP as part of the Chandrayaan mission came at the suggestion of former President A P J Abdul Kalam, a former rocket scientist, during the International Lunar Exploration Working Group conference held at Udaipur in November 2004.

The Indian tricolour has been hoisted on Mount Everest and Antarctica. And now it will be on the moon though it will not be hoisted.

The flight of the MIP on Friday is expected to be a forerunner to the second Indian moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, which will carry a Russian rover and alander slated for lift-off between 2010 and 2012. The crash landing of MIP will help in assessing future soft-landing technologies.

Chandrayaan project director Mylaswamy Annadurai explained to TOI on Friday that at about 8 pm on Friday, a command will be flashed to the MIP from Isro's telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) at Bangalore for it to detach from the orbiter. "The MIP will separate and with its three instruments, zoom towards the lunar south pole at a velocity of 1.5km per second," he said.

"At Istrac's mission control room, we will immediately come to know that the MIP has separated from the orbiter. The MIP's flight path will first take it over the Malapert crater for about nine seconds and then crashland near the Shackleton Crater about 25 minutes after its detachment from the orbiter. Malapert Crater is not far from the Shackleton crater," he added.

Annadurai said that after this, the orbiter will fly in the opposite side and thus data will not be immediately available. "The downloading of data from the MIP to the orbiting Chandrayaan and then to the ground station will start once the spacecraft comes over the north pole of the moon. It will take a couple of hours for the data from the MIP to be downloaded and processed," Annadurai said.

He said that once the MIP crashlands on the moon, its own survivability and that of the three instruments will be in question. The probe uses solid propellants. "India's physical presence on the moon with the tricolour will be assured," he said.
Source (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Tricolour_has_a_date_with_moon_tonight/articleshow/3710598.cms)

Illusionist

November 13th, 2008, 08:48 PM

Here is the Moon Impact Probe with Tricolor painted on it.
go baby go...
source: isro

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/MIP_08.jpg

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/MIP_06.jpg

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/MIP_05.jpg

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/MIP_02.jpg

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/MIP_01.jpg

barrykul

November 14th, 2008, 02:12 AM

Some pictures of the control center Indian Deep Space Network(ISDN) set up for the Chandrayaan project tracking the spacecraft at the ISTRAC campus of ISRO at Byalalu village, near Bangalore..

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/nic/0061/0061.jpg

The 32-metre antenna at the Indian Deep Space Network (ISDN), set up to track the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, is kept facing the moon at Byalalu village, near Bangalore..

http://www.hinduonnet.com/holnus/000200811140399.jpg

vidya

November 14th, 2008, 11:00 AM

Well Friends u all know that after the success of Chandrayaan India has announces Sun mission "Aditya" read more (http://www.exchange4projects.com/MISC/india-announces-sun-mission-aditya)

Into_salem

November 14th, 2008, 04:26 PM

:banana:

CHANDRAYAAN-1 PROBE LANDS ON THE MOON
:banana:
Source : NDTV

Illusionist

November 14th, 2008, 04:33 PM

Chandrayaan-I Impact Probe lands on moon
:banana::banana::banana::cheers::cheers:
MUMBAI: The Indian tricolour marked its presence on the moon on Friday night after having flown 3,86,000km from the earth. The timing of this
proud moment had been specially designed to coincide with Children's Day.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and the European Space Agency comprising 17 countries already have their flags on the moon.

The Indian tricolour is painted on all sides of the 29-kg Moon Impact Probe which is attached to the main orbiting spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1, which was launched on October 22.

The inclusion of the MIP as part of the Chandrayaan mission came at the suggestion of former President A P J Abdul Kalam, a former rocket scientist, during the International Lunar Exploration Working Group conference held at Udaipur in November 2004.

The Indian tricolour had been hoisted on Mount Everest and Antarctica. And now it is on the moon.

The flight of the MIP on Friday is a forerunner to the second Indian moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, which will carry a Russian rover and a lander slated for lift-off between 2010 and 2012.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Chandrayaan-I_Impact_Probe_lands_on_moon/articleshow/3714245.cms

congrats to all Indians. a proud day to be an Indian

Into_salem

November 14th, 2008, 04:38 PM

^^ Eagerly awaiting the pics from our own probe at the earliest. Let us proud Indians Cheer the ISRO Team. Congrats and well done ISRO Team.

Into_salem

November 14th, 2008, 04:40 PM

Another Source: (http://www.ddinews.gov.in/Homepage/Homepage+-+Top+Story/sadsa.htm)

India marked its presence on Moon on Friday night to be only the fourth nation to scale this historic milestone after a Moon Impact Probe with the national tri-colour painted successfully landed on the lunar surface after being detached from unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-1.

Joining the US, the erstwhile Soviet Union and the European Union, the 35-kg Moon Impact Probe(MIP) hit the moon exactly at 8.31 PM, about 25 minutes after the probe instrument descended from the satellite in what ISRO described as a "perfect operation".

Miniature Indian flags painted on four sides of the MIP signalled the country's symbolic entry into moon to coincide with the birth anniversary of the country's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, observed as Children's Day.

"It will signify the entry of India on Moon," an ISRO official said.

The MIP is one of the 11 scientific instruments (payloads) onboard Chandrayaan-1, India's first unmanned spacecraft mission to Moon launched on 22nd October from Sriharikota spaceport.

Developed by ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre of Thiruvananthapuram, the primary objective of MIP is to demonstrate the technologies required for landing a probe at the desired location on the moon.

The probe will help qualify some of the technologies related to future soft landing missions.

This apart, scientific exploration of the moon at close distance is also intended using MIP. (ST-14/11)

barrykul

November 14th, 2008, 05:11 PM

Wonderful. Mission objectives accomplished. ISRO and the team deserve kudos and gratitude from all Indians. Tis a great day in Indian history and Mighty proud to be Indian!

"The Moon was favourable to us. We have travelled all the way to the Moon. We have given Moon to India," a relieved ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair told reporters in Bangalore. Former president and rocket scientist A P J Abdul Kalam was by Nair's side when the country's top space scientist made the announcement of the moonlanding.

Illusionist

November 14th, 2008, 07:35 PM

Finally ISRO updated their site..

Indian Tricolour Placed on the Moon
on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s Birthday
November 14, 2008
In a historic event, the Indian space programme achieved a unique feat today (November 14, 2008) with the placing of Indian tricolour on the Moon’s surface on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s birthday.
http://isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/Chandrayaan/chandrayaan-03.jpg
The Indian flag was painted on the sides of Moon Impact Probe (MIP), one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, that successfully hit the lunar surface today at 20:31 hrs (8:31 pm) IST. This is the first Indian built object to reach the surface of the moon. The point of MIP’s impact was near the Moon’s South Polar Region. It may be recalled that the modern Indian space programme was initiated in 1962 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India.

Weighing 34 kg at the time of its launch onboard Chandrayaan-1, the box shaped MIP carried three instruments – a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer. The video imaging system was intended to take the pictures of the moon’s surface as MIP approached it. The radar altimeter was included to measure the rate of descent of the probe to the lunar surface. Such instruments are necessary for future lunar soft landing missions. And, the mass spectrometer was for studying the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.

MIP’s 25 minute journey to the lunar surface began with its separation from Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft at 20:06 hrs (8:06 pm) IST. This was followed by a series of automatic operations that began with the firing of its spin up rockets after achieving a safe distance of separation from Chandrayaan-1. Later, the probe slowed down with the firing of its retro rocket and started its rapid descent towards the moon’s surface. Information from the its instruments was radioed to Chandrayaan-1 by MIP. The spacecraft recorded this in its onboard memory for later readout. Finally, the probe had a hard landing on the lunar surface that terminated its functioning.

Thus, India’s very first attempt to send a probe to the moon’s surface from its spacecraft orbiting the moon has been successfully concluded.

With the switching ON of two of Chandrayaan-1’s payloads – Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM) – on its journey to moon and with MIP’s successful impact on the lunar surface today, it is planned to switch ON and test the remaining eight payloads of the spacecraft in the coming few days.

It may be recalled that Chandrayaan-1 was successfully launched by PSLV-C11 on October 22, 2008 from India’s spaceport at Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota into its intended initial elliptical orbit around the Earth. Following this, the spacecraft’s orbit was raised in steps and it was made to pass near the moon by repeatedly firing its 440 Newton liquid engine. After Chandrayaan-1’s entry into its planned lunar orbit on November 8, 2008, the orbital height was reduced in steps to its intended operational altitude of 100 km from the lunar surface.

Since its launch, the health and orbit of Chandrayaan-1 is being continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO’s Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Bangalore with critical support from antennas of Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu. IDSN antennas have also received the images and scientific information gathered by TMC, RADOM, and more recently, by MIP.

scdubagoor

November 14th, 2008, 09:03 PM

First Images from MIP are in: Source [ISRO]

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/2449/vis2904eh5.png

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/4388/vis2936im0.png

Illusionist

November 14th, 2008, 09:41 PM

scdubagoor

November 14th, 2008, 10:16 PM

awesome pics. you beat me to post them.
it would be nice if they put scale of the map in the image too. its hard to figure out the size of the craters without any reference.
our own moon closeup shot :D

btw since images are loading slowly from isro's website i uploaded them on photobucket.
here is the direct link
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/VIS_2936.jpg

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/VIS_2904.jpg

The news says the pictures are as is. May be they'll release enhanced images later.

Meanwhile every news agency is writing their own story. Some are reporting that it has landed and unfurled indian flag, some are saying it'll be performing experiments there. Hope they don't call it a rover.

Impact speed is 1.6 km per second: That would've surely created a crater (ISRO-CY-1) :)

I wish they'd taken it up one notch and reduced the impact speed eventhough it's hard to control with solid propellants. I hope the crater is much bigger than 5 meters. Eagerly awaiting for the pictures from Terrain Mapping Camera.

slashcruise

November 14th, 2008, 10:23 PM

Mission Accomplished: India fifth in world to reach moon

MUMBAI: The tricolour landed on the Moon at 8.31 pm on Friday, opening a new chapter in the history of India’s space exploration.
Other entities which have reached the Moon are the US, former Soviet Union, Japan (albeit via a malfunction that sent its orbiter crashing onto the lunar surface) and the European Space Agency (17 nations). India becomes the fifth member of this club.

The tricolour was painted on all sides of the 29 kg Moon Impact Probe (MIP) which was attached to the top portion of the main lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan. The MIP is the brainchild of former President A P J Abdul Kalam who witnessed its separation from the main orbiting craft and its crashlanding 32 km from the Shackleton crater on the moon’s south pole from the mission control room at ISRO’s telemetry, tracking and command network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore.

ISRO officials told TOI that the countdown for the MIP’s much-awaited flight to the surface of the Moon began at 7.47 pm.

It went off smoothly and at 8.01 pm the command was issued for it to separate from the orbiting spacecraft. The MIP began its flight towards the Moon’s south pole and after a 25-minute flight, crashlanded.

During its flight, its video camera took pictures of the Moon, the spectrometer began its analysis and the altitude meter did what is known as a ranging. While approaching the Moon, it slowed down slightly, then spun. While spinning, its three instruments went into action. When it was 5 km above the Moon’s surface, the altimeter did the ‘ranging of the Moon’. ‘‘All this while the atmosphere was pretty tense in the mission control room,’’ said a scientist.

Kalam’s rationale for including the MIP was that since Chandrayaan was orbiting the Moon at an altitude of 100 km above the lunar surface, a landing would make India’s presence felt on the Moon’s surface. He believed that if this was done, India could always stake a claim to a portion of the Moon.

Stryker

November 15th, 2008, 12:17 AM

Congratulations to India and ISRO. India has made it !!!

A country which was brushed aside as a poverty stricken backward country just a few years ago has now shown to the world that it can regain its past glory on its own and take its rightful place amongst the leading nations of the world.

India continues to awe the world and be a role model and source of inspiration for many developing countries in the world.

Illusionist

November 15th, 2008, 12:44 AM

some pics...
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/83693148.jpg

The scientists of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) checks the data at the Mission Operation Control Room at the ISRO center in Bangalore on November 14, 2008. An Indian probe landed on the moon on November 14, the Indian Space Research Organisation announced, in a milestone for the country's 45-year-old space programme. AFP PHOTO/Dibyangshu SARKAR (Photo credit should read DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP/Getty Images)

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/83693107.jpg

The scientists of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) check the data at the Mission Operation Control Room at the ISRO center in Bangalore on November 14, 2008. An Indian probe landed on the moon on November 14, the Indian Space Research Organisation announced, in a milestone for the country's 45-year-old space programme. AFP PHOTO/Dibyangshu SARKAR (Photo credit should read DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP/Getty Images)

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/83692100.jpg

The chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Madhavan Nair (L) gifts a moon model to former president of India A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (R) during a conference at the ISRO center in Bangalore on November 14, 2008. An Indian probe landed on the moon on November 14, the Indian Space Research Organisation announced, in a milestone for the country's 45-year-old space programme. AFP PHOTO/Dibyangshu SARKAR (Photo credit should read DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP/Getty Images) 8)

barrykul

November 15th, 2008, 07:10 AM

A good summary of events thus far

From launch to landing - Indian moon mission's journey (http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/000200811150944.htm)

Bangalore (IANS): India's first probe into moon landed on the lunar surface on Friday night after riding on Chandrayaan-1, the country's first unmanned spacecraft to the moon, after travelling around 384,000 km in 24 days days after blasting off from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh Oct 22.

Soon after the launch at 6.22 a.m. the spacecraft carrying 11 scientific payloads was put in an orbit of 22,860 km apogee (farthest point to the earth) and 225 km perigee (nearest point to the earth).

This is how Chandrayaan-1 reached the lunar orbit and then sent the moon impact probe (MIP) with the colours of the Indian national flag painted on its sides to the lunar surface.

Oct 23, first orbit raising exercise: apogee 37,900 km, perigee 305 km, 11 days to go round the earth.

Oct 25: apogee 74,715 km, perigee 336 km. 25 and half hours to orbit the earth.

Oct 26: apogee 164,600 km, perigee 348 km. Enters deep space. Takes 73 hours to go round the earth.

Oct 29: apogee 267,000 km, perigee 465 km. Six days to orbit the earth.

Oct 29: The terrain mapping camera successfully tested. First pictures, of northern coast of Australia from a height of 9,000 km and of southern coast from a height of 70,000 km. ISRO says "excellent imagery"

Nov 4: Reaches 380,000 km from earth, just around 4,000 km from moon.

Nov 8: Chandrayaan-1 successfully enters lunar orbit around 5.15 p.m. and India becomes the fifth country to send a spacecraft to moon. The others are United States, former Soviet Union, Japan and China. The European Space Agency (ESA), a consortium of 17 countries, has also sent a spacecraft to moon.

Nov 9: Chandrayaan-1 nudges closer to moon, orbiting over its polar regions at 200 km periselene (nearest point from moon) and 7,500 km aposelene (farthest point from moon).

Nov 10: The spacecraft moves to 187 km from the moon (periselene) and 255 km away (aposelene), orbiting elliptically once in every 2 hours and 16 minutes over the polar regions of the moon.

Nov 11: Chandrayaan-1 moves into further lower orbit of 102-km periselene and 255-km aposelene.

Nov 12: Placed in the final circular lunar orbit of 100 km, spinning around the poles of the moon every two hours.

Nov 13: Excitement builds ahead of the landing of the moon impact probe (MIP) on lunar surface Nov 14 night.

Nov 14 morning: Countdown begins at ISRO's ground command and tracking centre in Bangalore.

Nov 14 afternoon: Former Indian president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam arrives at the command and tracking centre to be part of the 'India on Moon' mission.

Nov 14 evening: At 8.06 p.m. Chandrayaan-1 releases the MIP.

Nov 14: At 8.31 p.m., the MIP covers the 100 km distance, taking "beautiful pictures of the lunar surface" as it descends.

At 6.22 am on Oct 22, ISRO chief G. Madhavan Nair said: "Our baby is on way to the moon."

On Nov 14 night, he said: "We have given the moon to India."

qwertyasd

November 16th, 2008, 04:13 AM

congrats India!

Illusionist

November 16th, 2008, 06:25 PM

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/tmc-polar-region.jpg
This is the picture of moon's surface taken from lunar orbit by Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft's Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) on November 15, 2008. Taken over the polar region of the moon, the picture shows many large and numerous small craters. The bright terrain on the lower left is the rim of 117 km wide Moretus crater.

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa176/indrajal/General/tmc-eq-region.jpg
This is the picture of moon's surface taken from lunar orbit by Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft's Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) on November 13, 2008. Taken over the equatorial region of the moon, the picture shows the uneven surface of the moon with numerous craters. On the lower left, part of the Torricelli crater is seen.

Illusionist

November 16th, 2008, 06:27 PM

LASER Instrument on Chandrayaan-1 Successfully Turned ON (http://isro.org/pressrelease/Nov16_2008.htm)

Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI), one of the 11 scientific instruments (payloads) carried by Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, has successfully been turned ON today (November 16, 2008). The instrument was switched ON when the spacecraft was passing over western part of the moon’s visible hemisphere. Preliminary assessment of the data from LLRI by ISRO scientists indicates that the instrument’s performance is normal. LLRI sends pulses of infrared laser light towards a strip of lunar surface and detects the reflected portion of that light. With this, the instrument can very accurately measure the height of moon’s surface features. LLRI will be continuously kept ON and takes 10 measurements per second on both day and night sides of the moon. It provides topographical details of both polar and equatorial regions of the moon. Detailed analysis of the data sent by LLRI helps in understanding the internal structure of the moon as well as the way that celestial body evolved.

It may be recalled that earlier, three other payloads of Chandrayaan-1 – Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC), Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM) and Moon Impact Probe (MIP) – were successfully turned ON. MIP, carrying Indian tricolour, was released from the spacecraft on November 14, 2008 and 25 minutes later, successfully impacted the lunar surface as intended. TMC took pictures of the Earth and moon when the spacecraft was on its way to moon. After reaching lunar orbit, TMC has been taking breathtaking pictures of the lunar panorama. RADOM was also switched ON in the Earth orbit itself.

The pictures and other scientific data sent by Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft from lunar orbit have been received by antennas of Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu. The spacecraft operations are being carried out from the Satellite Control Centre (SCC) of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Bangalore.

Into_salem

November 17th, 2008, 01:10 AM

COIMBATORE: The Chandrayaan missions may be able to unravel “more than a gold mine” because there is a “possibility of water, sunlight and helium” on the moon, Project Director of Chandrayaan-1 M. Annadurai said here on Sunday.

In an interaction with the staff of The Hindu during a brief visit with his wife, Vasanthi, to the office premises, Mr. Annadurai said the current mission was a rare one and “every Indian is proud of it.”

This mission was to see what was on the surface of the moon, to study its origin and evolution. He was confident that these explorations had shown the world “we are capable” and would help India become an “equal partner” in space missions with various countries.

The next mission — Chandrayaan-2 — would look beyond science and exploration (adventurism). “Then we might be able to even do in situ analysis by digging the soil in the moon.” There could be a chemical analysis of the “potentially fertile region.” For this mission, already Rs. 425 crore had been earmarked. And with the seed money of Rs. 50 crore, the “same team” (which worked on Chandrayaan-1), probably with slight modifications, would begin the work.

“When the findings from the two missions are logically extended and when Chandrayaan-3 is launched by 2015, the attempt will be to safely bring back the technology to earth.” Besides, there would be a parallel mission to see whether the moon was “habitable” by 2020. By then “we would be technically equipped [to accommodate human beings on the moon].”

Mr. Annadurai was prepared even to envisage the moon as a “natural space station,” as maintaining the current International Space Station was becoming very difficult. “The Moon can be an outpost for Mars. If water and helium there can be used, it will become a more viable option.”

Responding to a query on the impact of the success of Chandrayaan-1 on the people, he said: “One of the primary objectives of such a mission is not only to get [new] people but also to retain people by providing them a challenging ambience.” He thanked the media for its “wonderful” job in highlighting this mission.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/17/stories/2008111750920200.htm

harsh1802

November 17th, 2008, 06:45 AM

sanjupalayat

November 17th, 2008, 07:06 AM

Feeling proud to be an indian......

Fusionist

November 17th, 2008, 03:04 PM

Moon flyby by Chandrayaan 1 video

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/videos/tmc.htm

wish it was bigger.. still amazing ! :cheers:

scdubagoor

November 17th, 2008, 03:26 PM

Originally Posted by Into_salem
COIMBATORE: The Chandrayaan missions may be able to unravel “more than a gold mine” because there is a “possibility of water, sunlight and helium” on the moon, Project Director of Chandrayaan-1 M. Annadurai said here on Sunday.

:uh:

:) May be he meant abundant sunlight.

Prashasth

November 17th, 2008, 03:29 PM

Its really cool :nuts: ... maximised the video .. looks terrific ... amazing work ISRO ..

Illusionist

November 17th, 2008, 05:05 PM

awesome video.
moon never looked so good...

Fusionist

November 17th, 2008, 06:18 PM

I think there need to be a Chandrayaan 1 thread in the international section... possibly in the 'in the news' under Skybar. THe previous thread on hte topic was deleted.

barrykul

November 17th, 2008, 08:35 PM

ISRO's Moon Video on Youtube..

http://www.youtube.com/v/JlAF45eOT1Y

Fusionist

November 17th, 2008, 10:57 PM

**Breaking News**

ISRO finds evidence of Life in Moon

Chandrayaan 1 cameras made a sensational discovery when it found two giant footprint near the polar regions of the moon. The origins of the footprint and the question wheather the owner of the giant footprint is still alive or not is the next big question in everyones lips. On finding this spectacular evidence Dr Madhavan Nair, Chairman of ISRO said "Armstrong's words have come true ! This is indeed a a giant step for mankind and India. For all I know this could be the footprint of Lord Shiva. ISRO would be over the moon if we are the first people to have found the origins of God. Who says God and science doesnt go together?". However Dr Mylsami Annadurai, the Director of the Chandrayaan 1 programme was a bit skeptical. He claims "There is no God. The footprint looks dark meaning it must be the original humans and not God. However it still is a great find for ISRO and we all need to scientifically analyse this without getting carried away". More news to come as the event unfolds.

http://i36.************/ibmgwy.jpg

http://i37.************/nq8cus.jpg

source: http://who.elsebut.fusionist.con

Illusionist

November 17th, 2008, 11:14 PM

^^ whats the point of such post fusi?

Fusionist

November 17th, 2008, 11:21 PM

^^ whats the point of such post fusi?

um, I guess I got carried away when I saw the footprints :angel1:, but then its only a matter of time before someone else comes up with such theory isnt it ;)

senthil1409

November 17th, 2008, 11:22 PM

Here is an NDTV clipping of IDSN @ Byalalu. This facility has a storage of 250 TB (1 TB = 1000 GB ) of data. All the data received from the mission are stored here.

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/video/video.aspx?id=43881

Sorry, if this video has been posted earlier.

Stryker

November 18th, 2008, 12:45 AM

Is there a pic of the full moon disc taken by chandrayaan ? It would be an awesone pic.

Also a pic with Earth on the horizon would be a nice pic to look at.

ab041937

November 18th, 2008, 05:12 PM

The Indians have landed (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24665704-30417,00.html)
Jeremy Page
The Australian
November 18, 2008

A FLAWLESS 23-day Indian space mission has made a hard lunar landing, planting a flag symbolising the country's growing technical, economic and industrial might.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,6355073,00.jpg
Chandrayaan-1 blasts off from the Satish
Dhawan Space Centre near Chennai late last month

It is the first stage in India's ambition to put a man on the moon by 2020, four years before China aimed to become the second nation, after the US in the late 1960s and early '70s, to complete a manned mission.

The probe's mothership Chandrayaan-1 (Sanskrit for mooncraft) remains in orbit where Japanese and Chinese satellites already circle, each vying to boost national pride. Chandrayaan's success has stoked India's ego.

For Indian Space Research Organisation chairman Madhavan Nair, the mission has proved "very productive and fruitful". "We have also emerged as a low-cost travel agency to space," he says.

It is not just a landmark for the ISRO, which has launched dozens of satellites since it was founded in 1969, but had never before sent an object beyond Earth's orbit. The successful mission catapults India into an elite club: the US, Russia, Japan and China are the only other countries capable of independently reaching the moon (the European Space Agency has also sent a satellite into moon orbit).

It also marks the beginning of what some experts describe as a 21st-century Asian version of the space race between the US and the Soviet Union.

India is competing with China and Japan - Asia's two dominant powers - to send a man to the moon. Even South Korea has an ambitious space program.

"In the 20th century the race to the moon was fought between the erstwhile Cold War adversaries," says Pallava Bagla, author of Destination Moon, a history of ISRO.

"In the 21st century those gladiators have been left behind and the Asian nations, on the upsurge, have decided to take their place.

"Chandrayaan is a scientific mission, but it also has implications for global geopolitics. It's like a coming-out party for India."

The setting for the historic launch was the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, built in 1971 on Sriharikota Island, about 100km north of Chennai, and now surrounded by a bird sanctuary. The entrance looks much like that of any other Indian government compound: a couple of nonchalant policemen, a dirty tea shop, a few stray dogs. Only the two model rockets hint at the futuristic activity within.

Scientists and engineers clapped and hugged each other when news of the hard landing last Friday was transmitted to mission control along with video pictures of the event. Hundreds of millions more Indians watched live television coverage.

Chandrayaan took several days to travel 385,000km through space before reaching its final position 100km above the moon's surface. It spent 10 days in orbit before firing the lander to the surface, the Indian flag painted on its casing. The lander is thought to have settled in a crater near the south pole.

The mothership will orbit the moon for two years, using high-resolution remote sensing to compile, for the first time, a three-dimensional atlas of its surface and analyse its composition. "This is a historic moment for India," Nair says. "What we have started is a remarkable journey ... to unravel the mysteries of the moon."

On board are 11 instruments: five from ISRO and six from foreign agencies, including NASA and the ESA. ISRO is footing the bill for the mission and will have access to all data from the experiments in an unprecedented example of international co-operation in space.

The results could reveal whether the moon contains enough water and helium-3 (a potential energy source rare on Earth) to sustain human life.

"Man has to go to the moon," says T.K. Alex, head of ISRO's satellite centre. "If something happens to Earth, a natural or man-made disaster, we may also need a colony on Mars."

The idea of colonising the moon, let alone Mars, marks a huge strategic shift for India, which has previously focused on cheaper projects with more earthly applications.

India's modern space program was conceived by Jawaharlal Nehru, its first prime minister, as a peaceful way to lift the country out of poverty. ISRO has concentrated on civilian projects with social or industrial benefits, laying the foundations of India's recent information technology boom.

Today India has 16 satellites in orbit, supporting telecommunications, TV broadcasting, earth observation, weather forecasting, remote education and health care.

Because of an early shortage of funds it also boasts the world's most efficient space program, generating income from spacecraft sales and commercial satellite launches.

Now ISRO has far more ambitious and expensive plans. The Government has approved a second unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, that will land a rover on the moon by 2010-12. ISRO is also planning to put its first Indian astronaut into orbit by 2014-16, depending on when the Government approves the $2.4 billion budget. It has already announced plans to land a man on the moon by 2020.

The public response to the plans appears to reflect the gulf between India's consumer class of 50 million to 100 million people and the rest of the population of 1.1billion. Poorer Indians tend to say the money should be spent on fighting poverty in a country where 800 million people live on less than $3 a day and 47 per cent of children under three are malnourished.

"Will going to the moon help me to stop pedalling this?" asks Pappu Tiwari, 34, who pulls a cycle rickshaw in Delhi, supporting a wife and four children on little more than 2000 rupees ($60) a month.

"To me this space exploration is nothing but a gimmick."

Wealthy and middle-class professionals generally respond that the country lacks good governance, rather than money, and that the space program benefits Indian industry.

"Poverty and hunger will always remain," says Rajeev Kapoor, 48, a salesman from Delhi who supports his wife and two children on about 6000 rupees a month.

"By the time the Government would try to eradicate them completely, the world itself would have vanished."

There is, however, a new impetus for India's lunar ambitions. Mao Zedong initiated China's space program in 1958 with specific military applications in mind and placed it under the purview of the People's Liberation Army.

That head start, combined with a 30-year economic boom, means China is years ahead of India on several fronts, as demonstrated in a series of recent breakthroughs. China put its first astronaut in space in 2003, shot down a satellite and launched a lunar orbiter in 2007, and conducted the first space walk by a Chinese astronaut last month. Beijing plans to land a man on the moon by 2024.

Indian officials insist they are not racing with China, but they have eyed it with suspicion ever since Chinese forces easily prevailed in a brief border war in 1962. Last year India's army chief spoke in public for the first time of his fears about China's military space program and the need for India to accelerate its own.

Other Asian powers have also been spurred into action by China's recent success and by North Korea's claim to have tested a nuclear bomb in 2006. Japan launched a new unmanned lunar orbiter last year, has plans for an unmanned moon lander in 2012-13, and is considering putting a man on the moon by 2025. South Korea accelerated its space program in 2004 by teaming up with Russia to develop a space port and a satellite launch vehicle, due for completion this year.

"There's an element of rivalry, but each country has a mix of motivations," says Bates Gill, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. "It's a combination of national prestige and the spin-offs for technology. The third aspect is the military one. The ultimate high ground: space."

This new space race differs from the Cold War because of the lack of ideology and the international co-operation needed for expensive projects such as Mars missions, experts say. "Space is a global enterprise," says Henry R. Hertzfeld from George Washington University's Space Policy Institute.

Some foresee a golden era of global co-operation. NASA plans to send astronauts to the moon again by 2020 and to build a permanent base there. Russia aims to have one by 2028-32. If all plans come to fruition, the moon is going to be a little crowded.

Nevertheless, most experts agree that space exploration continues to be as much about politics as about science, and a few see trouble over the horizon.

China, India, Japan, Russia and the US publicly oppose the weaponisation of space, but all are developing space technology with potential military applications.

And India is the only country with a lunar program to have signed the 1979 UN Moon Agreement, which bans ownership of lunar resources. None has yet ratified it.

"There is a window over the next 10 to 15 years for countries to think about a resource race in space," Gill says. "It's not too early to think about what these countries might do that could avoid conflict in the future."

senthil1409

November 18th, 2008, 05:48 PM

Is there a pic of the full moon disc taken by chandrayaan ? It would be an awesone pic.

Also a pic with Earth on the horizon would be a nice pic to look at.

No, Chandrayaan in its current orbit cannot take any full moon pictures. The camera (TMC) is looking down the moon at a small area of size 20 km (swath) x 5m. I suppose ISRO will make composite images of the full moon (as a disc) available once they have sufficient data.

There are NO earth looking camera like the one on JAXA's (Kaguya/Selene) probe which will capture an earth rise over the horizon. JAXA had a high definition camera for PR reasons (http://www.kaguya.jaxa.jp/en/equipment/hdtv_e.htm) (as quoted in their website). You can see the earthrise pictures from the Japanese Probe here (http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071113_kaguya_e.html).

The terrain Camera (TC) (http://www.kaguya.jaxa.jp/en/equipment/tc_e.htm) on the Kaguya probe has a resolution of 10m, while Chandrayaan has a resolution of 5m (lower number is better) which is twice as much as Kaguya.

ISRO can do much better in Public Relations. They need a decent website with up to date information on various satellite, a decent image gallery and so on.

scdubagoor

November 18th, 2008, 06:09 PM

^^
The video that's published by ISRO is it 5m resolution? Does it(TMC) have zoom in and zoom out features.

Prashasth

November 18th, 2008, 06:19 PM

^^
You are right Senthil ... Just looked at JAXA website. Its stunning to say the least. Just imagine if our ISRO website was developed in Microsoft Silverlight technology or something similar. It would be state-of-the-art. :)

Only hope they would hire one of the several good I.T firms out in B'lore to revamp their ancient website.

senthil1409

November 18th, 2008, 08:57 PM

^^
The video that's published by ISRO is it 5m resolution? Does it(TMC) have zoom in and zoom out features.

I will try to answer your second question first. The TMC *DOES NOT* have Zoom in - Zoom out features that we are used to digital cameras. However it has four programmable gain controls. I will try to explain this below.

TMC can identify 1024 shades of colors. If we assign a number to each shade, 0 will be black and 1023 will be white, and other shades of gray will have numbers in between, as shown in the figure below. The polar regions of the moon are poorly illuminated by the sun through out the year (all the seasons). There is very little light reflected off the polar surface to be captured by the TMC. So we expect the images to be darker than images we take from the equator.

http://i396.photobucket.com/albums/pp46/senthil1409/gain_explanation-1.jpg
The TMC has 4 programmable gain controls. These are controlled by commands from the ground. The camera can be programmed to "zoom" (gain) into darker shades (or lighter shades if we are looking at a really bright object) as shown in the figure above. With some fancy image processing techniques the darker regions will appear brighter and much more detail will be visible. (This is similar to taking a picture of the same scene in the evening / twilight compared to a bright afternoon).

The TMC will also do "signal averaging" which will improve the Signal (image quality) at the cost of spatial resolution. So We will get images at the equitorial region at a resolution of 5m and lower resolution (10m - 160m) around the polar region. Please keep in mind that these are much higher resolution that what is currently available anywhere.

According to ISRO

A short movie made from the images taken by Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) of Chandrayaan-1 as the spacecraft flew over the area near the South polar region of moon. The Terrain Mapping Camera,built by ISRO's Space Applications Centre(SAC) of Ahmedabad, is taking excellent pictures of Moon's surface from Chandrayaan-1's 100 km high orbit from the Lunar surface.

The camera scans line by line (pushbroom mode) (similar to how a dotmatrix printer would print line by line). The scan happens horizontally and the satellite is moving vertically from top to bottom of the video. The lunar surface is imaged continuously. The video horizontally does not look like 4000px across. Since ISRO say that the video has been taken over the South Pole, I assume the TMC is doing "signal averaging" and hence the video is at a lower resolution.

scdubagoor

November 18th, 2008, 10:49 PM

The camera scans line by line (pushbroom mode) (similar to how a dotmatrix printer would print line by line). The scan happens horizontally and the satellite is moving vertically from top to bottom of the video. The lunar surface is imaged continuously. The video horizontally does not look like 4000px across. Since ISRO say that the video has been taken over the South Pole, I assume the TMC is doing "signal averaging" and hence the video is at a lower resolution.

Thanks Senthil1409. Are/were you involved with ISRO/chandrayaan project by any chance :)

senthil1409

November 19th, 2008, 05:05 AM

Thanks Senthil1409. Are/were you involved with ISRO/chandrayaan project by any chance :)

I wish! I'm just a regular desi like you, who is little more interested in astronomy and space in general!

slashcruise

November 19th, 2008, 09:43 AM

Chandrayaan finds maiden application in weather forecasts

CHENNAI: A few weeks back, Tamil Nadu government declared a holiday for all schools in Chennai fearing the heavy downpour that had been lashing
the city for over 10 days would continue. Schools remained closed and students had a great time, playing outside with not a drop of rain falling on their heads. Yet another weather forecast had gone wrong.

Now contrast this to what happened at Sriharikota on October 22nd. India was about to launch its most prestigious mission to date- Chandrayaan. And it was raining heavily. But the footages from the control room showed scientists in a very relaxed mood. As it happened, it rained before and after the launch, but during the blast off at 6:22 am, there wasn't a single drop of rain.

ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair, attributed this to weather modelling and forecasting techniques that the space agency had developed by using national and international scientific expertise.

"The weather all over the world is a mystery. I don't think anybody has deciphered it so far. But a team of scientists assembled here from various parts like ISRO, national aeronautics, lab, space physics lab, space application centre- they were running for the first time multiple simulation models based on fundamental physical principles. And these were assisted by observations we have from Kalpana spacecraft, Doppler weather radar developed by ISRO, and automatic weather stations and GPS atmospheric sounding equipment developed by ISRO. I can vouch for 48-hour weather prediction with 85% confidence level. And its 6-hour predictions are very precise. During the launch, everything went as per predictions." He added that ISRO would use this model for future launches.

Mr Nair said that ISRO is now in discussions with the Indian Meteorological Department to share some of these forecasting methods. "This is more relevant in the tropics. US and Europe already have well-established models for weather forecasting," he added.

"In this case, we created a model and ran software to predict weather for 6 hour, 12 hour intervals. Usually, the percentage of accuracy comes down with longer time lines. But, for the launch, we predicted weather for 48-hours with a confidence level of 85%. This could also go up to 72 hours in some models," said Mr Seshagiri Rao, deputy director- Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.

If this is widely used, it might come as bad news for students who prefer the playground to classrooms. But it could be a boon for people whose livelihood depends on accurate weather forecasts.

Source:- http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/LATEST_NEWS/Chandrayaan_finds_maiden_application_in_weather_forecasts/articleshow/3731339.cms

Stryker

November 19th, 2008, 08:39 PM

No, Chandrayaan in its current orbit cannot take any full moon pictures. The camera (TMC) is looking down the moon at a small area of size 20 km (swath) x 5m. I suppose ISRO will make composite images of the full moon (as a disc) available once they have sufficient data.

There are NO earth looking camera like the one on JAXA's (Kaguya/Selene) probe which will capture an earth rise over the horizon. JAXA had a high definition camera for PR reasons (http://www.kaguya.jaxa.jp/en/equipment/hdtv_e.htm) (as quoted in their website). You can see the earthrise pictures from the Japanese Probe here (http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071113_kaguya_e.html).

The terrain Camera (TC) (http://www.kaguya.jaxa.jp/en/equipment/tc_e.htm) on the Kaguya probe has a resolution of 10m, while Chandrayaan has a resolution of 5m (lower number is better) which is twice as much as Kaguya.

ISRO can do much better in Public Relations. They need a decent website with up to date information on various satellite, a decent image gallery and so on.

Thanks for the clarification.

I thought since CY took pictures of Earth from Space, it could have done so for Moon as well while it was on its way to the moon.

The moon-rise pics from the Japanese spacecraft ae awesome.

Illusionist

November 19th, 2008, 08:59 PM

I for one believe that isro's website is one of the most lousiest website ever for a major institution. They need to make it more user friendly, easier to navigate, information at right place, more updates and faster server.
i have emailed them to create a new website, i doubt they will pay attention to one man's opinion but if enough of us mail them then they will do something.
below are the email addresses of isro, please email them on both the addresses requesting to make better websites.

webmaster@isro.gov.in
info@isro.gov.in

thanks

scdubagoor

November 19th, 2008, 10:52 PM

senthil1409

November 19th, 2008, 10:53 PM

Thanks for the clarification.

I thought since CY took pictures of Earth from Space, it could have done so for Moon as well while it was on its way to the moon.

The moon-rise pics from the Japanese spacecraft ae awesome.

CY did take one picture of the moon on Nov 4th, 2008 as shown on the ISRO webpage. (http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/imagesfromchandrayaan/Moon_Enh.jpg)

The last new moon was on Oct 28th, 2008. The moon was in the waxing cresent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_phase) phase when the picture was taken. You can use this simulator to see how the moon picture would have looked if the pictures was taken on different dates. The simulator just shows how the moon would appear if you had looked up at night, on the selected day!

http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/vphase.html
If you select the day the image was taken, you will see that the picture taken by CY is exactly as expected.

We will get a full circular disc (full moon) only if we had launched a few days before full moon. We launched on 22nd Oct, which was a few days before the new moon, so it was not possible to get a full moon image.

Hope this explains!

senthil1409

November 19th, 2008, 11:50 PM

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) (http://m3.jpl.nasa.gov/) reports that the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), one of NASA's payloads is scheduled to be powered-up on Nov 18th, 18:16:00 UTC (23:46:00 IST). We haven't heard anything from ISRO yet.

The M3 primary goal is to map various minerals on the moon surface (crust). M3 will look at the polar regions to see if Hydrogen identified in previous missions is Hydrogen from Water (H2O).

It will also look for fresh (remember even 100 years in space "time" would be considered fresh :) ) craters formed by constant bombardment of meteorites. The mineral map over the moon will be used for targeting future robotic / man missions. We need to understand the frequency of bombardment of meteorites if we are (meaning humans, not just Indians) going to have a permanent presence on the moon.

M3 operates in pushbroom mode just like the TMC. The spatial resolution (70m / pixel ) is much less compared to the TMC, but higher than that of existing data. The Imaging swath is 40 Km , each scanned line is 600 px long. (total length is 600 pixels x 70 m /pixel = 42000 m or 42 Km). More details about the instrument is available at M3 Site @ JPL (http://m3.jpl.nasa.gov/INSTRUMENT/)

Prashasth

November 20th, 2008, 12:31 AM

Good try :)

I did something different, I sent an email to apj@abdulkalam.com :)

Wow scdubagoor, that's a really cool and responsible action from you.

I too followed your lead :) and have sent an email to the above address. Are you very sure though that the E-mail is indeed that of our former Prez ??

Anyways, this is the content of the mail I have sent:

http://i443.photobucket.com/albums/qq157/prashasth/APJK_mail.jpg

Into_salem

November 20th, 2008, 01:15 AM

^^^^ Real Good Initiative. Yes. APJ will make it happen. Probably we can invite him to view Indian SSC threads.

Illusionist

November 20th, 2008, 02:10 AM

Thanks guys for taking action on this issue.
also thanks to everyone who sent the mail to Dr Kalam.
could you forward the same mail to isro too..
some one will listen if we try.

added later: I have sent an email to Dr Kalam too :)

scdubagoor

November 20th, 2008, 05:01 AM

Wow scdubagoor, that's a really cool and responsible action from you.

I too followed your lead :) and have sent an email to the above address. Are you very sure though that the E-mail is indeed that of our former Prez ??

Anyways, this is the content of the mail I have sent:

http://i443.photobucket.com/albums/qq157/prashasth/APJK_mail.jpg

I regularly visit his site http://www.abdulkalam.com/kalam/index.jsp. Also check out his billionbeats (it's very slow; may be we have to send an email for that as well :) - Java shucks)

This is the first time I'm writing to him. Heard he reads most of his emails although it'd take a while :) Let's see. He's in Nepal this week.

I simply adore this great human being.

BTW Indrajal, I sent an email to ISRO too :). If we want we can create a thread in chaibar/appropriate main thread so we don't disturb the continuity of this thread.

senthil1409

November 20th, 2008, 04:50 PM

Video from European Space Agency (ESA) on Chandrayaan mission and ISRO - ESA co-operation.

6JKzAr4eqZ8

Video from European Space Agency (ESA) on Satish Dhawan Space Center (SHAR).

YFo9VEMDlro

The above videos are copyrighted by ESA and are available at http://www.esa.int/esa-mmg/mmg.pl?b=b&keyword=Chandrayaan&single=y&start=8&size=b

Stryker

November 20th, 2008, 08:54 PM

CY did take one picture of the moon on Nov 4th, 2008 as shown on the ISRO webpage. (http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/imagesfromchandrayaan/Moon_Enh.jpg)

The last new moon was on Oct 28th, 2008. The moon was in the waxing cresent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_phase) phase when the picture was taken. You can use this simulator to see how the moon picture would have looked if the pictures was taken on different dates. The simulator just shows how the moon would appear if you had looked up at night, on the selected day!

http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/vphase.html
If you select the day the image was taken, you will see that the picture taken by CY is exactly as expected.

We will get a full circular disc (full moon) only if we had launched a few days before full moon. We launched on 22nd Oct, which was a few days before the new moon, so it was not possible to get a full moon image.

Hope this explains!

Thanks Senthil for the explanation....quite professional. Do you work for ISRO / and other space agency ?

senthil1409

November 24th, 2008, 03:54 AM

Thanks Senthil for the explanation....quite professional. Do you work for ISRO / and other space agency ?

No, I'm just a regular guy who is a little interested in Space & Science Technology.

Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 23 (PTI) With the success of Chandrayaan-1, the country's first moon mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning a manned space mission as a first step to manned moon mission.
"Sending man to moon is a very complicated mission. So, as a first step, we plan to develop an Indian spacecraft that will take astronauts across the earth and bring them back," ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said delivering a lecture on 'India's Recent Space Achievements' here today.

The government approval for the mission was yet to be received and ISRO was planning the programme by 2015, Nair said.

ISRO was also in the process of developing technologies for a manned moon mission and it would take more than six to seven years to develop those technologies, he said adding our effort is to achieve the milestone by the time the proposed next manned moon mission of USA and China materialise in 2020".

On the next Space programme of ISRO, Nair said government has accorded sanction for the Chandrayaan-II mission that would be launched in 2012. The work on Chandrayaan-II had started, he said. Under the programme, a robotic lunar rover would smooth land on the moon and conduct experiments, he said.

'Adithya', was the another space programme in the pipeline, he said. Under this programme, effort would be made to study the Solar System by launching a satellite and the same would be stationed within the earth orbit, he said.

"There was no plan to send any satellite to Sun," he said referring to media reports that ISRO was planning a Sun Mission. PTI

Source:http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/7CEE96DD3788F1BC6525750A0051ECAA?OpenDocument

kolkatausa

November 24th, 2008, 05:20 AM

thanks for those videos. they were very enlightening.

Illusionist

November 24th, 2008, 10:12 PM

Chandrayaan-1 Starts Observations Of The Moon (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081124131241.htm)
ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2008) — The Indian Space Research Organisation’s lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 released a probe that impacted close to the lunar south pole on 14 November. Following this, the instruments on the spacecraft are being switched on to get the science observations started.

The Moon Impact Probe was dropped close to Shackleton crater, a place close to the south pole, where ice may exist in areas that are never illuminated by the Sun. It carried three instruments: a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer. The imaging system took pictures of the Moon as it approached the surface, the radar was used to determine the altitude, and the mass spectrometer was used to study the thin lunar atmosphere.

The probe was released from the spacecraft at 15:36 CET (20:06 Indian Standard Time), on 14 November and took 25 minutes to reach the surface. As it descended, the probe transmitted pictures to the orbiter that were later downloaded to Earth.

The Terrain Mapping Camera, TMC, and the Radiation Dose Monitor, RADOM, were functional by that time on the orbiter. After the impact of the probe, the remaining orbiter instruments were switched on consecutively for their commissioning activities.

During commissioning all standard operating modes of an instrument are exercised and the data and housekeeping parameters are examined to verify that everything is working properly.

The European near-infrared spectrometer SIR-2 was commissioned successfully on 19 November. The instrument was switched on and sent back housekeeping data indicating normal functionality. Science observations were started successfully on 20 November.

The Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer, C1XS, was first activated on 23 November, and its commissioning is in progress.

The Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyser, SARA will be commissioned from 7 to 10 December. The commissioning for this instrument will take longer than usual because the instrument operates at a high-voltage, which will be increased in steps.

Chandrayaan-1, India’s first mission to venture beyond Earth orbit, was launched on 22 October 2008. The mission is led by ISRO. ESA has coordinated and supported the provision of the three European instruments on board (C1XS, SARA, SIR-2), and assisted ISRO in areas such as flight dynamics and is supporting data archiving and processing. As a result of the collaboration, ESA and ISRO will share the data from their respective instruments. Other international partners in the mission include Bulgaria and the USA.
--------------------------------------------

i am still waiting on isro to update their site and provide us more pictures and data. Isro must do a better PR job (

Fusionist

November 25th, 2008, 01:42 AM

i am still waiting on isro to update their site and provide us more pictures and data. Isro must do a better PR job (

very much. When the world is watching ISRO with awe, ISRO choses to go to sleep. This is what I call missing a good opportunity.

vidya

November 25th, 2008, 07:52 AM

I think the success of chandrayaan-I has given great confidence because now India is coming up with another space mission but which will be manned mission (http://www.exchange4projects.com/MISC/indian-plans-manned-space-mission)

Into_salem

November 25th, 2008, 05:39 PM

Thiruvananthapuram: As the Chandrayaan I satellite treads a circular path around the moon, the latter is throwing up challenges to ISRO scientists as they strive for a successful completion of the two-year mission.

ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair said here on Sunday that owing to the volatile nature of the moon, temperature inside the satellite had gone up by ten degrees. This could hamper sensitive instruments inside the satellite.

``We’re trying to artificially cool it now,’’ he said delivering the Regent Maharani Setu Lakshmi Bayi Memorial Lecture marking her 113th birth anniversary. ``It’s a risky mission,’’ he said, speaking on the theme `India’s Recent Space Achievements.’ If things go as planned, ISRO will be able to create the first lunar atlas with a picture resolution of below ten metres, he said. The ISRO expects to take one-and-a-half years to complete the mapping with the Terrain Mapping Camera on board the satellite.

ISRO will soon launch the `Aditya’ satellite which will be positioned in the earth orbit and study the sun, and how solar phenomena affects the earth’s ionosphere and atmosphere, Madhavan Nair said. ISRO has started work on the Chandrayaan II Mission and the design was ready. The mission, which envisages a rover, is expected to lift off in 2012.

On a manned mission by India to the moon, Madhavan Nair said India can maintain its position among spacefaring nations if the ISRO can put a man on the moon by 2020. ``Only two nations - China and the US - have plans for a manned mission to the moon. They plan to do it by 2020. If India too can do it by then, we can maintain our position,’’ he said.

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Chandrayaan+mission+throwing+up+challenges%E2%80%99&artid=hKgJwGHri8M=&SectionID=lMx/b5mt1kU=&MainSectionID=lMx/b5mt1kU=&SectionName=tm2kh5uDhixGlQvAG42A/07OVZOOEmts&SEO=Chandrayaan,%20satellite,%20ISRO,%20scientists,%20moon,%20mi

senthil1409

November 25th, 2008, 06:13 PM

A blog by Dr. Paul Spudis regarding the Moon Impact Probe , who is the Principal Investigator of the MiniSAR payload from NASA for the Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine

I am in Bangalore, sitting awake in my hotel room at 4 am. Last night was a memorable and exciting experience. Chandrayaan-1, in lunar orbit since last Saturday, released its Moon Impact Probe (MIP), designed to descend and hit the Moon at high velocity, sending images and other data as it went. This part of the mission had to go well in order to fully deploy the Chandrayaan antenna, required to send all the mapping data to Earth. Once the antenna is deployed tomorrow, Chandrayaan will begin the job of mapping the Moon from a polar orbit for the next two years.

What a great linked-together world we live in! As I sit here in India, in the middle of the night, on the opposite side of the Earth, my good friend Astronaut Don Pettit and six of his colleagues are getting ready to blast into orbit on the Space Shuttle Endeavour. I am watching the launch countdown on NASA TV over the internet on my laptop computer. In addition, I’m getting live launch status and weather reports via e-mail from my colleague Dr. Ben Bussey of the Applied Physics Laboratory, who is down at the Cape for the launch. Ben just sent me a Blackberry cell phone image he took of the Shuttle on the pad, lit up by floodlights; I reciprocated by sending him an image sent down last night from the Moon by the MIP just a few minutes before its impact. And just now, the NASA TV feed shows a nearly full Moon, slowly rising over the Atlantic and the Shuttle launch site. Three friends, separated by the globe and involved in two very different space missions, but looking over each others’ shoulders. I think about it and find it profound and deeply satisfying.

Back to the MIP impact last night. It has the air of a Hollywood premier about it. The press is packed along the street outside the Mission Control Center, the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the former President of India are in the viewing room, along with hundreds of ISRO engineers and scientists. The air is electric with anticipation. Although the mission of Chandrayaan has been nearly flawless so far, the release, descent and impact of the MIP is a critical event, not only for its data, but also for the pride India feels in this mission, all riding on a little subsatellite with the national flag painted on its side.

We have little to look at in the control center. Large computer projection displays show technical data and graphs. We observe major mission events by noting a change in velocity here or a drop in voltage there. I am somewhat lost, but one of the investigators on the MIP mass spectrometer helps me interpret what I’m seeing. The MIP separates from Chandrayaan, begins to spin for stabilization, and then fires a solid rocket motor to brake itself out of lunar orbit. The descent to the surface takes about 25 minutes. We see none of the data in real time; the images and measurements are being relayed to the main spacecraft and will be sent down to Earth in 90 minutes, on the next orbital pass. We see that everything is working fine through the cryptic and delightful expedient of observing Chandrayaan’s data recorder filling up – with numbers in hexadecimal, no less! – presumably with data from the probe. Suddenly, the graphs show a large spike or a drop to zero; the probe has hit the Moon! Applause and cheers!

There is much backslapping and good cheer in the room. President Abdul Kalam makes a brief and moving statement, dedicating the Moon probe to India’s children as a symbol of hope for the future. My colleague from APL and I decide that it’s been a long day and it’s best to leave the facility now; there’ll be plenty of time to look at the scientific results tomorrow. As we emerge from our cocoon, I am amazed to see the press frenzy outside. Long lines of reporters are doing TV remotes and newspaper people pace the sidewalk. They have been kept out of the control center and only a few are being let in for interviews. Therefore, anybody coming outside is fair game and they pounce on the two Americans (not particularly inconspicuous over here) for scraps of information. Who are we? Are we part of the mission? Was the probe impact successful? (This last question surprises me – haven’t they been told yet that all went well?) We try to answer their questions, but our car is waiting and the last thing we want is to get caught in the obviously approaching massive traffic jam. So we leap for the car doors and speed off into the night.

The MIP impact is a major public and media event. It is a source of great pride to the Indians and ISRO has done a marvelous job on the mission. But the real work is yet to come. In the next two years, Chandrayaan will map the Moon in unprecedented detail. Future milestones may be less splashy, but they will largely make up the ultimate value of the Chandryaan-1 mission.

Source: http://moon.airspacemag.com/2008/11/15/hitting-a-bulls-eye-on-the-moon/

senthil1409

November 25th, 2008, 07:11 PM

ISRO has posted some of the first results from Chandrayaan on the Chandrayaan-1 website. (http://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan/htmls/home.htm) Here is the image from Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI) in comparison with the TMC (Terrain Mapping Camera).

http://i396.photobucket.com/albums/pp46/senthil1409/chandrayaan/th_1map_hysi.jpg (http://s396.photobucket.com/albums/pp46/senthil1409/chandrayaan/1map_hysi.jpg)

The first strip on the left is the combination of Red, Green and Blue Channels as noted on the top of the image. Only 3 of the 64 channels were used to produce the image.
(Red (R) is 33rd, Green (G) is 18th and Blue is 6th channel (band) of the 64 channels (bands) in the HySI.

Similarly the middle image is produced by combining data from Infra Red (48th Channel), Red (33rd Channel) and Green (18th Channel).

The last image is the corresponding image obtained from the Terrain Mapping camera. This image has been resized to a lower size (downsampled) because it if of higher resolution compared to the HySI. The TMC resolution is 5m while the HySI resolution is 80m. So the TMC has been resized by a factor of 16.

senthil1409

November 25th, 2008, 07:21 PM

Two more images from the HySI showing images obtained from all the 64 Channels (bands).

http://i396.photobucket.com/albums/pp46/senthil1409/chandrayaan/th_3HysI_Roll.jpg (http://s396.photobucket.com/albums/pp46/senthil1409/chandrayaan/3HysI_Roll.jpg)

http://i396.photobucket.com/albums/pp46/senthil1409/chandrayaan/th_2CombinedHySi_Final.jpg (http://s396.photobucket.com/albums/pp46/senthil1409/chandrayaan/2CombinedHySi_Final.jpg)

Illusionist

November 25th, 2008, 07:51 PM

FINALLY... thank god they took time to update the website.

i was hoping to see more images with better pic gallery though.. but even this will work..

Into_salem

November 26th, 2008, 01:20 AM

Chandrayaan mission on target

Data sent from nine scientific instruments being analysed
http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/6109/2008112657811301pe6.jpg

Detail-Rich: Three-dimensional images of the moon’s surface, with craters and other features, captured during the past fortnight by the Terrain Mapping Camera of Chandrayaan-1.

CHENNAI: Nine out of 11 scientific instruments on board Chandrayaan-1 have been switched on, and the data that have been radioed in by them are being analysed.

According to M. Annadurai, Project Director, Chandrayaan-1, the data include three-dimensional pictures of the Moon’s surface taken by the Terrain Mapping Camera, an instrument built by ISRO’s Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad.

The TMC has fore, nadir and aft cameras. Of the nine instruments that have been activated, the Moon Impact Probe, painted in the colours of the Indian flag, landed on the Moon on November 14.
Two more to go

The instruments that remain to be activated are the High Energy X-ray Spectrometer (HEX) and the Sub keV Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA). HEX, built by the Physical Research Laboratory, Bangalore and the ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, will study the Moon’s polar regions for deposits of water ice and prospect areas for high uranium and thorium concentration.

SARA will investigate the surface composition, how its surface reacts to the solar wind and how materials are altered in space. SARA has been jointly built by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and the Space Physics Laboratory of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram.

HEX and SARA, both high voltage instruments, will be switched on in the first week of December. “These are high voltage systems. You have to wait for some time in orbit before they are switched on,” Mr. Annadurai said.

When the ISRO performed a series of manoeuvres by firing Chandrayaan-1’s onboard engine to take the spacecraft to the Moon and then lower it into the final lunar orbit at an altitude of 100 km above it, the two systems could have been exposed to gases.

These gases should be “evacuated’ before the two instruments were activated, he said. The calibration of instruments was under way. Teams dealing with the instruments were studying the data received. “The science data needs to be fully reviewed and analysed,” said Mr. Annadurai.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/26/stories/2008112657811300.htm

barrykul

November 26th, 2008, 01:40 AM

Uploaded By: Pierre Niles

K. Thyagrajan Prog. Director IRS/SSS, Isro Satellite Center

PPT on Chandrayaan-1 (http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/aSGuest1589-97870-chandrayaan-1-india-maiden-moon-spacecraft-nasa-october-22-astrology-lunar-isro-asteroid-chandrayaan1-satish-dhawan-tifr-science-technology-ppt-powerpoint/)

Into_salem

November 26th, 2008, 02:11 AM

^^ Nice find. Is there a way to get the PPT file.

Illusionist

November 26th, 2008, 05:59 PM

Second video of lunar fly by by CY1

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/videos/tmca.htm

Stryker

November 28th, 2008, 06:58 AM

This video is awesome

Fusionist

November 29th, 2008, 01:19 AM

amazing indeed. :cheers:

nDaY4p6WO6w

..and I think there is a need for this to be shared in the international forum.

ab041937

November 29th, 2008, 03:18 AM

Thank God, we have this thread for detox.

Makes you realize that there is still lot to hope for & look up to in life amidst all this gloom.

Stryker

November 29th, 2008, 06:28 AM

There was a thread in the international forum but someone ( moderator ??? ) removed it . WHY ???

Into_salem

November 29th, 2008, 08:43 AM

amazing indeed. :cheers:

nDaY4p6WO6w

..and I think there is a need for this to be shared in the international forum.

Awesome vidoe. ISRO you are really great. Keep it up.

sujithinfra

December 4th, 2008, 07:17 AM

guys what happened! there is no news about the shuttle! no updates either! did it vanish ~~~

Fusionist

December 4th, 2008, 04:21 PM

guys what happened! there is no news about the shuttle! no updates either! did it vanish ~~~

CY1 is going to be in orbit for 2 years.. doing just about the same thing. So obviosly from onw on the updates will be fewer.

Into_salem

December 7th, 2008, 08:20 AM

Guwahati (IANS): India would be able to send a manned mission to the moon by 2020, while the second unmanned spacecraft would be ready by 2012, said a top space scientist who was involved in the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1.

"If everything goes as per the plan, we will be ready to send a man to moon by 2020," said Jitendranath Goswami, director of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad.

PRL is the laboratory that helped build a payload called the high energy X-ray spectrometer that will look for water ice in the polar regions of the moon.

Goswami, who hails from Assam, was Saturday interacting with students, journalists, and academics, in Guwahati.

"Maybe in 50 years from now, there will be an alternate space to live in Mars," the space scientist said.

Goswami said he felt proud to be part of the historic moon mission and spelt out other programmes in the pipeline.

"As a scientist I have miles to go," Goswami was modest in his reply to a question as to how he felt being part of Chandrayaan-1.

"But we're not in any great hurry. We're hoping to get data (from Chandrayaan-1) for a long time."

He stressed on the need to help children get attracted towards science and space technology by urging parents to do something inspirational. "Parents and guardians can inspire their children to achieve something in life," Goswami said.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/008200812070931.htm

Into_salem

December 14th, 2008, 01:12 PM

New Delhi (PTI): After the historic moon mission, India will redesign Russian space capsule Soyuz to send its astronauts on the country's maiden manned space mission.

"We will be redesigning the Soyuz space capsule of the Russian agency for our mission," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair told PTI.

ISRO signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Russian space agency Roskosmos on Joint Activities in the Field of Human Spaceflight Programme during the recent visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev here.

Under the MoU signed by Nair and his Russian counterpart Anatoly Perminov, space scientists from the two countries will jointly build the spacecraft for India's manned mission.

The Soyuz, which has been in use since 1967, has been upgraded several times and has recently brought back American astronauts from the International Space Station.

The Soyuz TM is a modernised version of the Soyuz T with a new docking and rendezvous, radio communications, emergency and integrated parachute/landing engine systems. It has a more durable metal body and lighter heat shield material.

It serves as both a ferry for Russian crews coming to and from the space station as well as a "lifeboat" for any emergency escapes.

Government has already sanctioned Rs 95 crore to study all aspects of the manned space mission under which ISRO plans to send a two-member crew on a week-long sojourn in space.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/000200812141380.htm

harsh1802

December 14th, 2008, 10:50 PM

Bless the Russians. Actually, the Chinese and us need to thank them for all the technology that they are selling to us.

:)

senthil1409

December 15th, 2008, 08:07 AM

Bless the Russians. Actually, the Chinese and us need to thank them for all the technology that they are selling to us.

:)

Cross posting my older post from Space Sector Thread for clarification. Irresepective of what PTI has reported, I dont think we are going to use the Soyuz capsule.

I guess what Dr. Nair was saying was, Soyuz like design (meaning an expendable Orbital , Service module, with only the rentry module that survive the reentry). This is in contrast with the space shuttle, where the entire spacecraft survives the rentry. Here is my older post from Space Sector Updates thread (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=28297820&postcount=529)

For our manned mission, we will NOT be using a design like NASA's space shuttle. We will be using a design similar to the one used in the Apollo landings. We tested some aspects of this such as the thermal protection system (heatshield), braking parachute, floatation system etc with the Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Jan22_2007.htm) in the PSLV-C7 mission during Jan 2007. This does not mean that we have a capsule ready, but we have gained knowledge on some of the subsystems needed for a space capsule.

Though the space shuttle, looks very much futuristic compared to the space capsule, they are very very expensive. It costs 300 Million US$ just to launch a space shuttle. The cost per kg of payload is 3 -4 times more expensive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_heavy_lift_launch_systems) than other US launchers. I cant find an official figure for PSLV / GSLV yet but my guess is our launches would be atleast 6-8 times cheaper than US rocket launches.

NASA is retiring its space shuttle fleet and is going back to the Space capsule design (called Orion (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/orion/index.html)) in its new program called constellation.

My guess is that our design will be similar to the time tested Russian Soyuz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_spacecraft) spacecraft. The chinese adopted a similar design in their Shenzhou spacecraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhou_spacecraft).

I hope this clarifies a few things.

Illusionist

December 19th, 2008, 03:40 PM

NASA Instrument Inaugurates 3-D Moon Imaging

Source (http://jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-239)

http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/3377/m3browsesz3.jpg
The left figure is a color composite of processed data that accentuates compositional differences in the moon's Orientale region. The image on the right contains significant thermal emission in the signal and is particularly sensitive to small variations in local morphology. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Brown

December 17, 2008

PASADENA, Calif. – Different wavelengths of light provide new information about the Orientale Basin region of the moon in a new composite image taken by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a guest instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper is the first instrument to provide highly uniform imaging of the lunar surface. Along with the length and width dimensions across a typical image, the instrument analyzes a third dimension – color.

This two-image figure, and other data from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper Instrument can be found at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11727 .

The composite image consists of a subset of Moon Mineralogy Mapper data for the Orientale region. The image strip on the left is a color composite of data from 28 separate wavelengths of light reflected from the moon. The blue to red tones reveal changes in rock and mineral composition, and the green color is an indication of the abundance of iron-bearing minerals such as pyroxene. The image strip on the right is from a single wavelength of light that contains thermal emission, providing a new level of detail on the form and structure of the region's surface.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper provides scientists their first opportunity to examine lunar mineralogy at high spatial and spectral resolution.

"The Moon Mineralogy Mapper provides us with compositional information across the moon that we have never had access to before," said Carle Pieters, the instrument's principal investigator, from Brown University in Providence, R.I. "Our ability to now identify and map the composition of the surface in geologic context provides a new level of detail needed to explore and understand Earth's nearest neighbor."

The Orientale Basin is located on the moon's western limb. The data for this composite were captured by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper during the commissioning phase of Chandrayaan-1 as the spacecraft orbited the moon at an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 miles).

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper was selected as a Mission of Opportunity through the NASA Discovery Program. Carle Pieters of Brown University is the principal investigator and has oversight of the instrument as a whole as well as the Moon Mineralogy Mapper Science Team. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., designed and built the Moon Mineralogy Mapper and is home to its project manager, Mary White. JPL manages the project for NASA's Discovery Program in the Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was constructed, launched, and is operated by the Indian Space Research Organization.

More information about Chandrayaan-1 is at : http://www.isro.org/Chandrayaan . More information about NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper is at : http://m3.jpl.nasa.gov .

Illusionist

December 19th, 2008, 03:57 PM

First Peek at M3 Data!

source (http://m3science.geo.brown.edu/?p=19)

We are thrilled to finally be able to share with our colleagues and the public a look at the first set of data that our Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument collected! M3’s first look at the Moon occurred on November 22, 2008 when we acquired some new data for the Orientale Basin.

http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/6954/fig12cn5.jpg
The first image is a “context” image, whose purpose is to allow you to get a feel for where on the Moon the long, narrow M3 data strips are located. It shows part of one orbit of Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) data superimposed on Lunar Aeronautical Chart (LAC) 108. This LAC sheet covers the southern portion of the Orientale Basin, a large impact structure on the Moon’s western limb. North is up. Major geological features in this orbit of M3 data include basaltic materials in the basin center, impact melt related to basin formation, Orientale basin massifs (mountains), and dark pyroclastic volcanic materials in the south. The LAC sheet background image is the 750 nm Clementine UVVIS basemap. The M3 strip is 40 km wide, and was acquired in the instrument’s lower-resolution mode at a spatial resolution of 140 m/pixel. The blue box identifies the subset region shown in later figures.

http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/474/fig2a1gz5.jpg
This second image is a subset of a longer M3 “image-cube” acquired across the Oriental Basin. To create this image using a two-dimensional detector, one line of spatial information (40 km in width with 300 elements) is acquired simultaneously with all channels in the spectral dimension. As the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft moves along an orbit from pole to pole, the second dimension of spatial information is obtained line by line forming the image shown. A full spectrum from 420 to 3000 nm is thus acquired for every spatial element within the scene ( altogether 182,000 spectra for this subset!). These M3 low-resolution data consist of 86 spectral channels continuously spaced from 420 to 2980 nm. Example spectra for four small areas are shown in the next image. The areas are located just to the left of the numbers in the figure above which correspond to the spectra labeled in the next image.

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/7356/fig2bresizeduk6.jpg
Our third image (really a figure) is a plot that shows some example visible to near-infrared spectra extracted from the M3 subset across the Orientale Basin. Number labels refer to the location of each spectrum in the previous image. Prominent absorption features (arrows) are seen near 1000 and 2000 nm for the two small craters #2 and #4. These spectral features are due to iron-bearing pyroxene at those locations. Subtle differences between the shape and wavelength of these pyroxene features indicate differences in pyroxene composition associated with magnesium, calcium, and iron content. Most lunar soil spectra, such as spectrum #3, have very weak absorption features, but exhibit an overall trend in which reflectance increases toward longer wavelengths (we call this trend a red-sloped continuum). Spectrum #1 exhibits no evidence for the presence of iron-bearing minerals but is very bright. This mountain, and several like it in this scene, is composed almost entirely of the mineral plagioclase forming a rock called anorthosite. The presence of anorthosite plays a central role in the early “magma ocean” formation of the lunar crust.

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/9254/fig3th5.jpg
Finally, we have a set of three images of the subset of M3 data for the Orientale region. These images contain 300 spatial elements (pixels) across the 40 km field of view, providing 140 m resolution. On the left is one spectral band at 750 nm in which the signal is entirely reflected solar light. The middle figure is a color composite of processed data that accentuates compositional differences. The blue to red colors represent the slope of the lunar continuum in the near-infrared. The green color is an indication of the abundance of iron-bearing minerals such as pyroxene ( as measured by an integrated band depth derived from 26 channels of continuum removed data between 790 and 1290 nm). The image on the right is a single M3 spectral band at 2940 nm. This image contains significant thermal emission in the signal and is particularly sensitive to small variations in local morphology. These new data provide mineralogical constraints on geologic processes that occur within the Orientale Basin. The dark mare region in the north-east part of the image contains the greatest abundance of iron-rich minerals and is basaltic in composition. Although a few small areas of iron-bearing minerals occur within the impact melt formed by the basin impact (seen along the left and bottom of the image), this material is very plagioclase rich, and several mountains and blocks are essentially pure anorthosite.

Please check back to this site for updates! New results will be released periodically!

Stryker

December 20th, 2008, 02:21 AM

^^ Nice Infrmation. Thanks.

I would be very interested in knowing the mineral composition of Moon and the findings of M3.

Stryker

December 20th, 2008, 02:24 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7791816.stm

India lunar craft problem 'fixed'
By Swaminathan Natarajan
BBC Tamil service

CHANDRAYAAN 1

1 - Chandrayaan Energetic Neutral Analyzer (CENA)
2 - Moon Impact Probe (MIP)
3 - Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM)
4 - Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC)
5 - Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3)
6 - Chandrayaan 1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS)
7 - Solar Panel

Indian space scientists say they have corrected a major heat problem that threatened India's first unmanned lunar craft Chandrayaan 1.

They say that the craft is now functioning normally after the heat was brought down.

India launched its first lunar mission on 22 October. It reached lunar orbit in the first week of November.

But soon after that the temperature inside the probe went up to 50C, endangering the mission.

Project director M Annadurai told the BBC: "Due to various measures we took, now the temperature has come down below 40C.

"All the 11 instruments carried on board are working normally."

The heat rise had prompted scientists to take urgent measures.

The problem arose because of very hot temperatures during lunar orbit.

A lot of onboard equipment was switched off and the satellite was tilted by 20 degrees. "The lunar probe has also been brought back to its original position," M Annadurai added.

The Indian lunar mission aims to map the Moon's surface, look for traces of water and the presence of helium.

The mission is regarded as a major step for India as it seeks to keep pace with other space-faring nations in Asia.

Illusionist

December 20th, 2008, 04:52 AM

ISRO is doing a horrible job again of public relations. Still their website says nothing and we are getting news from third party sources...

Looks like our emails fell to the deaf ears..

Illusionist

December 25th, 2008, 07:25 PM

more moon updates

http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/ImageMoon.htm

Stryker

December 25th, 2008, 09:28 PM

NASA instrument on Chandrayaan finds minerals on moon

Bangalore: The moon mineralogy mapper (M3), a scientific instrument of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) onboard India's first lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, found iron-bearing minerals on the lunar surface, the US space agency said Thursday.

"The mapper spectrometer has beamed images of the Orientale Basin region of the moon, indicating abundance of iron-bearing minerals such as pyroxene. Using different wavelengths of light, the instrument has also revealed for the first time changes in rock and mineral composition," M3 principal investigator Carle Pieters said in a statement hosted on NASA website.

Data from the 7-kg mapper provides space scientists first opportunity to examine lunar mineralogy at high spatial and spectral resolution.

The Orientale Basin is located on the moon's western limb. M3 captured the data last week when Chandrayaan was orbiting the moon at an altitude of 100 km.

"The imaging spectrometer provides us with compositional information across the moon that we have never had access to before. Our ability to identify and map the composition of the surface in geologic context provides a new level of detail needed to explore and understand the earth's nearest celestial neighbour," affirmed Pieters, who teaches at Brown University in Rhode Island.

The mapper was selected as a mission of opportunity through the NASA discovery programme. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed and built the instrument at Pasadena in California.

"M3 will also help in characterising and mapping lunar minerals for knowing the moon's early geological evolution. Its compositional maps will improve our understanding of the early evolution of a differentiated planetary body and provide a high-resolution assessment of lunar resources," Chandrayaan project director M. Annadurai averred.

M3 is one of the 10 instruments onboard the unmanned Chandrayaan, conducting experiments while the spacecraft orbits over the moon next two years.

Five instruments were indigenously built by the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), while the remaining six payloads are of foreign origin, including three from the European Space Agency, two from NASA and one from Bulgaria.

Chandrayaan was blasted off Oct 22 onboard the 316-tonne polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-C11) from ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota spaceport, about 80 km north of Chennai.

After traversing 384,000 km through the deep space for 18 days, the spacecraft entered the lunar orbit Nov 8 and its moon impact probe was lowered on the moon's surface Nov 14.

Source:Indo-Asian News Service

EMP

December 27th, 2008, 07:22 PM

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/photo.cms?photoid=3899543

EMP

December 27th, 2008, 07:23 PM

First results from Chandrayaan 1

Illusionist

December 27th, 2008, 07:55 PM

^ ^ Cant see anything in your post!!

Into_salem

December 30th, 2008, 01:24 PM

New Delhi (IANS): It is a set of pictures that is among the most anticipated in India - around 3,200 frames tracking the descent of the first-ever Indian-built device to the moon's surface.

But the Indian public may have to wait for some more time to take a peek at that journey.

The images were taken by the 35-kg Moon Impact Probe (MIP) as it hurtled down for nearly 25 minutes after detaching from India's maiden lunar probe Chandrayaan-I and landed on the lunar surface at 8.31 p.m. Nov 14.

That day, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had released two photos of the pockmarked surface taken from MIP. Nothing after that.

According to a key Chandrayaan scientist, it is now a matter of waiting a bit more - though he still could not specify the date.

"While we have released some sample images already, the full set of 3,200 pictures will also be made public after some more time," A.S. Kiran Kumar, deputy director, sensor development area in ISRO's Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre, told IANS.

Kumar headed the team which built the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC), one of India's key payloads on Chandrayaan.

The pictures are currently being analysed at ISRO's Physical Research Laboratory. "We could be releasing it in a couple of months," Kumar said, adding that the last photograph on the set was from a height of two to three kilometres from the surface.

One of the several activities involved in getting the pictures ready for public release is to identify the surface features. "Since the pictures are of very high resolution, the features are not listed on any current moon atlas," he said.

The TMC has meanwhile been mapping the South Pole at a resolution of five metres, through lens capable of capturing images at three angles simultaneously.

Recently, China unveiled a three-dimensional map of the lunar surface with data from its Chang'e-1 mission, while Japan has been frequently releasing imagery from its lunar orbiter, Kaguya, including that of the landing site of the Apollo 17 spacecraft.

But, Kumar insisted, photographs collected by the Indian orbiter would be better due to higher resolution and lower orbit height at 100 km.

"The Chinese camera is three-dimensional but only has a resolution of 200 metres compared to our five-metre resolution. The Japanese one has 10-metre resolution, but they have only stereo doublet - we have a stereo triplet," he said.

By stereo triplet, the senior ISRO scientist referred to TMC's capability to take images from three angles - frontal, nadir and rear views. "The advantage is that no portion (of the surface) will be blocked. Occlusion will not be a problem," he said.

In optics, 'occlusion' refers to the method in which a close object masks or covers an object that is further away.

While Chandrayaan goes around the moon approximately 12 times each day - the camera is operational for two to three orbits.

"We have to balance every activity on the satellite, take note of the operating condition and find the optimal time to transmit to the ground station," Kumar said.

The time slot also gets limited as the camera has to factor in the solar illumination angle, which changes with the orbit of the moon. The scientists have decided to limit the solar angle to 30 degrees on both sides of the equator to take consistently well-lit images.

During the 20-minute photographing in each orbit, TMC captures images over an area 1,700 km long and 20 km wide, which translates into 1.4 km per second.

"Every second of data recorded takes about two and a half seconds to be transmitted to the ground station," said Kumar. The latest photograph released is of a lunar impact crater on the far side of the moon.

The senior ISRO scientist said several images have also been provided to academic institutions for analyses.

NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper payload team has also sought information from TMC. "They are interested in particularly looking at the terrain data," Kumar added.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/000200812301121.htm

Illusionist

January 7th, 2009, 09:21 AM

photo gallery updated by isro . This time updates are more detailed but too few
http://isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/moon_images.htm

harsh1802

January 11th, 2009, 04:50 PM

PUNE: Nearly 40 years after Nasa's Apollo flights, which put a man on the moon, India's Chandrayaan mission launched on October 22, 2008,
recently did something unique this week it mapped the landing sites of the six Apollo missions on the moon and the process ended on Saturday.

The Apollo flights were launched between July 1969 and December 1972.

This hitherto unknown aspect of the Chandrayaan programme was revealed to TOI on Saturday by a top scientist associated with the Indian moon mission, P Sreekumar, who quit his job in the US to be a part of the Indian moon team. He was among the participants at the inauguration of the International Year of Astronomy programme at the Pune-based Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCCA).

Sreekumar told TOI that that the six Apollo landing sites which were mapped related to those of Apollo 11, 12, 14 15 and 17. The process began on January 7 and ended on January 10. "Our purpose of carrying out this exercise was to validate and confirm the data through global mapping about the moon's surface and rocks which had been obtained by these Apollo flights," he said. It may be recalled that Apollo 11 placed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, which became historical because they were the first humans to step on the lunar surface.

He said that the mapping of the Apollo landing zones were done by six of the 11 scientific payloads on Chandrayaan which included the indigenous Terrain Mapping Camera which was first activated on October 29, 1995, the Hyper Spectal Imaging Camera also from Isro, Nasa's Moon Minerology Mapper, Radom from Bulgaria and the Near Infra-Red Spectrometer (Sir-2) of Germany.

Told that the Apollo landing sites were on the equatorial region of the moon, while Chandrayaan operated in the north-south polar orbit, Sreekumar explained that even though the Indian moon mission was flying in the polar orbit, it was successfully covering the entire surface of the moon, which included the six Apollo landing sites.

He said that another instrument on Chandrayaan, the Sub-Kev Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA), a contribution through ESA from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, the Space Physics Laboratory and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, was activated this week. The role of this equipment is to image the moon's surface composition, including the permanently shadowed areas, study the solar wind interaction and carry out studies connected with space weathering.

Source (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pune/Apollo_landing_sites_mapped_by_Chandrayaan/articleshow/3961580.cms)

Illusionist

January 11th, 2009, 10:24 PM

^ ^ Any pictures of the same. That will be the biggest PR for ISRO if they can make those pics available ;)

Illusionist

January 13th, 2009, 08:17 PM

Chandrayaan Beams 40,000 Images of Moon Surface
http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Chandrayaan_Beams_40000_Images_of_Moon_Surface/551-97700-547.html
The comprehensive mapping, with resolutions of up to five meters, will help the country plan future missions to the moon
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ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair announced that the Chandrayaan has sent more than 40,000 images to the base station in the last two months.

These images are currently being analyzed and will undoubtedly prove invaluable to the scientific community. The ISRO chief said that while there were many lunar missions in the past, none of them has been able to provide comprehensive data in the form of images so detailed.

The Chandrayaan has been able to capture images of the lunar surface and get a complete picture of the moon with resolutions of up to five meters. Compare this with earlier missions, which capture images with a 100-meter resolution and that too of a very limited area.

The images from the mission will be used to study the composition of the lunar surface and to learn in detail the mineral composition of the moon. The comprehensive mapping will also help the country plan future missions to the moon, he said.

The chairman, speaking during an event, added that ISRO is blazing all guns and expects the country to execute its first manned moon mission by 2015!

vidya

January 15th, 2009, 06:30 AM

The Rs 386-crore Indian Moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, which completes a flawless 100 days around January 30 has transmitted more than 40,000 images of different types since its launch on October 22, 2008, which many in ISRO believe is quite a record compared to the lunar flights of other nations.

read here (http://www.exchange4projects.com/MISC/40000-images-transmitted-from-india-moon-mission)

Euromast

January 17th, 2009, 11:58 AM

Images of moon by CY (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshowpics/msid-3993763.cms)

Euromast

January 17th, 2009, 07:03 PM

ISRO begins work on Chandrayaan-II project

CHENNAI: ISRO has begun working on the Rs 425-crore second unmanned moon mission to be launched by early 2012 following the success of
Chandrayaan-I, a top ISRO official said here on Staurday.

Chandrayaan-II will focus on soil and mineral exploration on the lunar surface with the help of a robotic device and send back data, Chandrayaan Project Director Mayilsamy Annadurai told reporters here.

The work had begun on the project and it was likely to be launched by end of 2011 or early 2012, he said.

ISRO plans to send a manned flight to space in 2015 and the manned mission to the moon in 2020, he added.

About Chandrayaan-I, he said it has beamed 40,000 pictures since its launch.

The stakeholders of the project would meet soon to discuss the information beamed by India's successful lunar mission, Annadurai said.

economictimes

Into_salem

January 17th, 2009, 07:46 PM

Using a NASA radar flying aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists are able to get their first look inside the moon's coldest and darkest craters.

The Mini-SAR instrument is a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, that passed its initial in-flight tests and sent back its first data, NASA said.

The images show the floors of permanently-shadowed polar craters on the moon that aren't visible from Earth. Scientists are using the instrument to map and search the insides of the craters for "water ice".

"The only way to explore such areas is to use an orbital imaging radar such as Mini-SAR," said Benjamin Bussey, deputy principal investigator for Mini-SAR, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

"This is an exciting first step for the team which has worked diligently for more than three years to get to this point," he said.

The images were taken on 17th November 2008 and cover part of the Haworth crater at the moon's south pole and the western rim of Seares crater, an impact feature near the north pole.

Further data collection by Mini-SAR and analysis will help scientists to determine if buried ice deposits exist in the permanently shadowed craters near the moon's poles.

"During the next few months we expect to have a fully calibrated and operational instrument collecting valuable science data at the moon," said Jason Crusan, programme executive for the Mini-RF Program for NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.

http://www.ddinews.gov.in/Current+Affairs/moon+nasa.htm

Illusionist

January 20th, 2009, 12:25 AM

NASA Radar Provides First Look Inside Moon’s Shadowed Craters
WASHINGTON -- Using a NASA radar flying aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists are getting their first look inside the moon's coldest, darkest craters.

The Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, has passed its initial in-flight tests and sent back its first data. The images show the floors of permanently-shadowed polar craters on the moon that aren't visible from Earth. Scientists are using the instrument to map and search the insides of the craters for water ice.

"The only way to explore such areas is to use an orbital imaging radar such as Mini-SAR," said Benjamin Bussey, deputy principal investigator for Mini-SAR, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "This is an exciting first step for the team which has worked diligently for more than three years to get to this point."
more and pics at (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/news/2009-01-16_radar_first_look.html)

Illusionist

January 20th, 2009, 12:26 AM

ISRO Updated photogallary again
http://isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/moon_images.htm

Krishnamoorthy K

January 23rd, 2009, 11:24 AM

To facilitate online access to the huge amount of data coming in from Chandrayaan, which is being sent to various laboratories, the Government of India (GoI) is set to leverage EU-IndiaGrid's grid technology.

The govt. has initiated grid computing through Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to enable Indian researchers and scholars to access grids worldwide with 10 gigabits per second.

Speaking on the new initiative, Dr. R. Chidambaram, principal scientific adviser to the GoI and chairman of the scientific advisory committee to the Cabinet, said the access to grids throughout the world will facilitate the Indian scientists. "Data will start flowing to India online and we can tackle issues that pertain to climate change and also help in other areas as well," he added.

The initiative will also help open source programs related to IT, biotechnology and drug discovery. "Through interoperability at C-DAC facility in Bangalore, it will pave a path for sharing multiple applications," Chidambaram said.

The major objectives of this grid-backed project include advancement of technologies through pilot applications in high energy and material science; academic research, and industrial community; and leverage European EGEE Grid technology achievements in India.

The EC-funded EU-IndiaGrid project aims to bring together over 500 multidisciplinary organizations to build a grid-enabled e-Science community.

Source: CXOtoday.com (http://www.cxotoday.com/India/News/EU-IndiaGrid_to_Channelize_Chandrayaan_Data/551-98075-912.html) 22 Jan 2009

Illusionist

January 23rd, 2009, 10:08 PM

C1XS Catches First Glimpse of X-rays from the Moon
http://isro.org/pressrelease/Jan23_2009.htm
The Imaging X-ray Spectrometer, one of the 11 payloads onboard Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, jointly developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and UK’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, has successfully detected the first X-ray signature from the Moon. This is the first step in its mission to reveal the origin and evolution of the Moon by mapping its surface composition. It may be recalled that Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota on October 22, 2008 and entered the lunar orbit on November 8, 2008.

In orbit around the Moon, Chandrayaan-1 Imaging X ray Spectrometer (C1XS) detected the X-ray signal from a region near the Apollo landing sites on ? December 12, 2008 at 02:36 UT. The solar flare that caused the X-ray fluorescence was exceedingly weak, approximately 20 times smaller than the minimum C1XS was designed to detect. The X-ray camera collected 3 minutes of data from the Moon just as the flare started and the camera finished its observation. C1XS depends on radiation from the Sun to activate the detection of X rays. Though, the minimum in solar activity was expected to end in early 2008, however solar activity is yet to reach the anticipated increase. With the highly sensitive C1XS instrument, it has been possible to detect the X rays.

The camera - C1XS (pronounced “kicks”) – was designed and built at Space Science and Technology Department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in collaboration with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is an X-Ray Spectrometer that uses X-rays to map the surface composition of the Moon and will help scientists to understand its origin and evolution, as well as quantifying the mineral resources that exist there.

Chandrayaan-1 is the first lunar mission of ISRO and also the first mission with international partners. It is designed to orbit the Moon at an altitude of 100 km and carries 11 scientific instruments including radar and particle detectors as well as instruments that will make observations in the visible, near infrared and soft and hard X-rays.

Dr G Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO said that the joint development and operationalisation of C1XS in Chandrayaan-1 between ISRO and RAL, UK is a major achievement. First signatures obtained from C1XS are highly encouraging.