Moon Eyes

In the club of countries that have reached out to the moon, the latest is India. The South Asian country launched its first moon mission under the name Chandrayaan-1, which translates to the Moon Vehicle. The program was undertaken by the Indian Space Research Organization and it lasted from October 2008 to August 2009. There were two primary components of the Indian moon mission namely, a lunar orbiter and a lunar impactor. The impactor part was designated as the Moon Impact Probe.

Nearly all the technology and infrastructure that was involved in the moon mission was indigenously developed by the Indian Space Research Organization with contributions coming from India's Defence Research and Development Organization as well as a number of civil and military contractors from the private and public sector. The mission uses a modified version of India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle which was designated as the PSLV C11. The ignition and lift off took place from India's Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Shriharikota city. The city is located in Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh, India and is one the premier spaceports of the country.

The Moon Impact Probe separated from the orbiter at around 2006 hrs on November 14, 2008 according the earth time and date system. A controlled impact was made on the moon's south pole at 2031 hrs on the same earth day. The hard landing was made near the Shackleton crater and was carrying a radar altimeter, video imaging system and a mass spectrometer, which was to be used to search for water.

The moon mission carried payload of equipment from ISRO as well as multiple other space exploration organizations. The Indian payload included a Terrain Mapping Camera, a Hyper Spectral Imager, a Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument, a High Energy aj/gamma x-ray spectrometer, and the Moon Impact probe itself. A number of foreign devices were also carried free of cost. This included the X-ray fluorescence sepctrometer developed jointly by ISRO and Rutherford Appleton Lab of United Kingdom, a Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyser of the European Space Agency, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper funded by NASA, SIR-2 near infrared spectrometer also of the European Space Agency, miniSAR of the NASA and Radiation Dose Monitor Experiment of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The mission was supposed to last for two years but was declared over after only 312 days. It was mired by several failures. The thermal shielding proved inadequate and star sensors failed occasionally. Despite the fact that the mission could not last even half of the expected duration of two years, it was able to achieve nearly 95% of the mission parameters. The star discovery of the mission was widespread presence of water molecules in moon's soil!