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India to kick up moon dust
By agencies
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Wednesday, 06 September 2006, 19:30 IST
BANGALORE: The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is all set for an unmanned lunar mission into the skies. Announcing the 2007-2008 launch of Chandrayaan I, scientists at ISRO are building their first indigenous orbiter and impactor to crash into the surface of the moon and toss up a plume of soil and scientific data on minerals and water.
The remote sensing satellite will weigh 1304 kilograms (kg), with 590 kg as initial orbit mass and 504 kg dry mass and will carry the 30 kg impactor to be designed at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC) at Trivandrum (Kerala). It would also carry high-resolution remote sensing equipment for visible, near infrared, soft and hard X-ray frequencies, during its orbit period of two-years around the moon. The two-year span is intended to include surveying the lunar surface and produce a comprehensive map of the moons chemical characteristics and three-dimensional topography. The polar regions, that are supposed to contain water ice, are of special interest to the mission.
The orbitor will be jettisoned into space by the PSLV, informed Dr. J.N. Goswami, principal investigator for Chandrayaan-I and director of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad. The satellite would include instruments of NASA and the European Space Agency, apart from the Indian payloads.
We will release the impactor at the beginning of our lunar mission and record the details (of lunar surface and soil) as it creates a crater on the surface. It will be a free fall, but we want to try and glide it to a place chosen by us, Goswami said.
Scientists associated with Chandrayaan I will meet at Bangalore on the 6th and 7th of September to discuss various aspects of the project, the time period for studies planned on-board the orbiter, safety aspects of the space-craft and other related issues.