PS COLUMN ARCHIVE

October 29, 2008

Success in launching the lunar exploration satellite of India

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced that they successfully launched lunar explorer Chandrayan-1 on October 22, last Wednesday. It was just one year after the launch of Chinese lunar probe Chang’e-1 (launched on October 24, 2007) and approximately a year and a month after Japanese moonprobe KAGUYA. I learned that Chandrayan means a vehicle to the moon in Sanskrit. Launch success of India this time means that the three spacecrafts of three Asian countries are going around the moon to search mysteries of moon. It could be safely said that it is really the first time and probably the last in the history of space development. It also proves how deep concerns Asian people have toward moon including Japanese.

And now Chandrayan-1 is smoothly cruising toward moon and will be put on the orbit around moon probably at the beginning of November. It is just about the same orbit as Japanese KAGUYA and will go around moon over the poles at the altitude 100km. Chandrayan-1 is loaded with eleven science instruments, among which six is made in India and other five are made in UK, USA, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria to tell how highly international this mission is. Many of the instruments are similar to those of KAGUYA but some of them are quite unique not in possession of KAGUYA.

One of the unique instruments is MIP (Moon Impact Probe). The aim of this instrument is to hit the lunar surface at the designated position separated from the explorer going around the moon. This was planned in preparation for India’s future soft-landing on moon. MIP is to send to satellite the data such as change in altitude, images and atmospheric components gathered during 25 minutes descending before the probe hits the surface.

Attention is also being paid to the observation results of Mini-SAR devised by Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University of America. Mini-SAR is to prove the existence of ice presumed to be lying at the poles by reflection of radio waves. The camera team of KAGUYA mission carefully studied the inside of crater at the pole, and just the other day, they announced that there was not found ice at the bottom of the crater, as far as the crater in question is concerned. Mini-SAR, however, has a potential possibility of finding new information if there would be ice or not under the lunar soil.

Asian initiated science will be flourishing before long. Let us look forward to the unexpected interesting results come out of it.

For more information on Indian moonprobe Chandrayan-1, please visit website:

http://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan/htmls/home.htm