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Weekend Achievement: Chandrayaan-1 Places Indian Tricolour on Moon

Posted: 14 Nov 2008 11:41 PM CST

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Great weekend for India. Great day for Indian space programme initiated in 1962.

Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully placed the Indian flag painted on the sides of Moon Impact Probe (MIP - photo on the right) at 2031 hours IST on November 14, 2008.

The Chandrayaan-1 with a mission life of 2 years, is aimed at high-resolution remote sensing of the moon in visible, near infrared (NIR), low energy X-rays and high-energy X-ray regions.

The Chandrayaan-1 moon mission was launched on October 22 through PSLV-C11. Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is presently orbiting at an altitude of 100 km from the lunar surface. MIP is one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft that successfully hit the lunar surface. 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.

The eleven payloads of Chandrayaan-1 moon mission are:

  • The indigenously developed payload/ experiments:india_moon3
    • Terrain Mapping stereo Camera (TMC)
    • Hyper Spectral Imaging camera (HySI)
    • Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI)
    • High Energy X-ray spectrometer (HEX)
    • Moon Impact Probe (MIP)
  • Announcement of Opportunity payloads:
    • Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) through ESA - a collaboration between Rutherford Appleton Laboratory,UK and ISRO Satellite Centre, ISRO.
    • Near Infra Red spectrometer (SIR-2) from Max Plank Institute for Solar System Science, through Max-Planck Society, Germany and ESA.
    • Sub keV Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA) through ESA, from Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Sweden and Space Physics Laboratory, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, ISRO.
    • Radiation Dose Monitor Experiment (RADOM) from Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
    • Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) from Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University and Naval Air Warfare Centre, USA through NASA.
    • Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) from Brown University and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA through NASA.

Here are close up pictures of the moon’s surface taken by Moon Impact Probe (MIP) on November 14, 2008 as it approached it after separating from Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

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Download more details on Chandrayaan-1 as pdf. Introduction (36 pages), Booklet (72 pages)

Here are interesting three part video clips on Chandrayaan-1. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

All the above images are from ISRO and read more about Chandrayaan-1 mission from ISRO.

Posts in MarineBuzz on this day a year before:

Tuticorin Port to Add Up a New Berth at a Cost of Rs 400 Million

Indian Coast Guard Commences Search and Rescue Exercise off Port Blair

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