Chandrayaan-1
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Chandrayaan 1 is an Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) mission to orbit the moon for two years, gathering scientific information and testing India's space capabilities. Based upon the Kalpansat weather satellite, it is a 1.5 meter bus weighing approx. 523 kg. Chandrayaan carries a 29kg Moon Impact Probe (MIP) and a 55kg scientific payload.
The spacecraft was successfully launched on PSLV on October 22nd 2008. A power supply failure caused premature termination of the mission in August of 2009. At that time Chandrayaan-1 was expected to crash into the moon in about 1000 days.
Instrumentation
The scientific payload consists of the following:
Indigenous
- Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) with a 5 meter resolution.
- Hyper Spectral Imager (HySi) for mineralogical mapping in the 400-900 nanometer band. Spectral resolution of 15 nanometers. Spacial resolution of 80 meters.
- Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI) for mapping lunar topography.
- High Energy X-ray/gamma ray spectrometer (HEX). 30 - 250 keV range. Designed to detect the decay products of Uranium and Thorium.
- Moon Impact Probe (MIP). 29 kg released from a 100km orbit.
Foreign
- Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer (C1XS). 1-10 keV range fluorescence. Ground resolution of 10km. Measures abundance of elemental Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Fe, and Ti on the lunar surface. Through ESA.
- Near Infra Red spectrometer (SIR-2). 0.93-2.4 μm range. 6nm spectral resolution. Through ESA.
- Sub KeV Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA). Through ESA.
- Radiation Dose Monitor Experiment (RADOM). From Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
- Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (MiniSAR). Through NASA.
- Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3). Through NASA.
Lunar orbiting spacecraft.
Sponsor: Indian Space Research Organization