Author: Mona, New Delhi.
Chandrayaan-1, India’s first unmanned spacecraft mission with its well defined objectives intends to put its spacecraft into an orbit around the moon and to perform remote sensing of it. It aims to further expand our knowledge about the moon. Thanks to the India’s scientific community for successful put off of first unmanned spacecraft- Chandrayaan-1.
Chandrayaan-1:
Chandrayaan-1 is a mission with vision of exploration of Moon. It is dictated by Indian national agency for space, ISRO. Under the mission a space craft launched at 6.22 a.m (IST) on 22nd October of 2009 from the Satish Dhwan Space Center situated in Sriharikota of Andhra Pradesh. Chandrayaan is a word derived from language Sanskrit and it simply means “moon-vehicle.” The weight of the space-craft is 1,308 kilograms and it carries remote sensing devices with high resolution for near infrared, visible, hard and soft frequencies of X-ray.
Following are some facts about Chandrayaan-1:
Launch date: October 22 at 00:52 UTC
Lunar orbit insertion: November 8 at 11:21 UTC
Nominal mission: two years
The total mission cost is INR 3.8 billion (US $83 million)
Spacecraft:
Cube shape, with a length of 1.5 meters on each side and a total mass of 1,050 kilograms (523 kilograms initial orbit mass and 440 kilograms dry mass). The satellite design is based on ISRO’s Kalpansat meteorological satellite that was launched in 2002. Chandrayaan-1 will also carry a 30-kilogram probe that will penetrate the surface of the Moon.
A 750-Watt solar panel together with a Lithium-Ion battery will supply power to the spacecraft. A bipropellant engine will be used to enter orbit and to maintain the spacecraft’s orbit at the Moon.
Orbit:
Chandrayaan-1 launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, on a PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket. After a five-and-a-half-day 240 by 36,000 kilometer geotransfer orbit, it ends up in a 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) orbit around the Moon. From there, it dropped to a checkout orbit of only 200 kilometers (120 miles) and then a final orbit 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the surface of the Moon, where it will suppose to orbit for about two years.
Journey and Sussess:
Unfortunately, only 10 months after launch, the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) lunar satellite Chandrayaan-1 has mysteriously ceased communication with mission control. ISRO officials have declared that the mission has ended, 14 months earlier than planned.
On Saturday, at 1:30am local time, the ISRO lost communications, and according to a spokesman, the agency is no longer in control of the spacecraft. Chandrayaan-1 data was being received by a monitoring unit in the southern city of Bangalore. There is currently no explanation for the failure.
The mission had completed 3,400 orbits of the Moon and everything seemed to be operational for the next few thousand orbits. The ambitious mission was launched by the fledgling space agency to allow India to stake a claim over lunar exploration with the future hope of exploiting the Moon’s natural resources (such as the abundance of uranium). This mission put India into a very exclusive club of only five international space agencies that had sent missions to the Moon before. Before India only five space agencies named, NASA, JAXA, ESA, ROSCOSMOS and the CNSA has sussesfully launched lunar satellite on moon.
This isn’t the first problem the satellite had suffered, however. In May, the probe lost a critical instrument called a star sensor, and then in July, the craft overheated. Fortunately, further damage to the rest of the satellite was averted by ground controllers.
Despite the obviously upsetting news about the loss of the $80 million piece of ISRO hardware, officials are surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing.
“The mission is definitely over. We have lost contact with the spacecraft,” Project Director M. Annadurai said. “Chandrayaan-1 has done its job technically… 100 per cent. Scientifically also, it has done almost 90-95 percent of its job.”
Personally, I think the ISRO did a superb job at developing Chandrayaan-1 mission, and simply getting the thing into lunar orbit is an incredible feat. Another aspect I was impressed with was the ground controllers’ ability to deal with problems in-flight and fix them accordingly. This can only help to strengthen India’s ability when launching future missions to the Moon.
Does this mean India’s Moon journey end with Chandrayaan-1?
No, it is not over, ISRO is actively working on the development of Chandrayaan-2
Chandrayaan-2:
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning 2nd moon mission Chandrayaan-2 in 2013. Russia’s Federal Space Agency (ROSKOSMOS) is joining with ISRO for development of Chandrayaan-2 Lander/Rover.
Chandrayaan-2 will consist of the spacecraft and a landing platform with the moon rover.
The rover would move on wheels on the lunar surface, pick up samples of soil or rocks, do a chemical analysis and send the data to the spacecraft orbiting above.
The rover will weigh between 30 kg and 100 kg, depending on whether it is to do a semi-hard landing or soft landing. The rover will have an operating life-span of a month. It will run predominantly on solar power.
If ISRO wants to operate the rover for two or three months, its engineers will configure the vehicle and its instruments including a battery back-up to go into a low-power mode, with the rover waking up when sunlight streams through. When the sunlight comes, the solar-powered battery cells will be re-charged and the equipment will be switched on one by one for the rover to function for another two weeks.The batteries will be re-charged every two weeks.
Development and Plan:
India has completed the design of Chandrayaan-2., its next mission to the moon – this time in collaboration with Russia.
“Right now, the design has been completed. We had a joint review with Russian scientists here,” Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation, G Madhavan Nair, told PTI.
According to the Bangalore-headquartered space agency, the Chandrayaan-2 mission would have an orbital flight vehicle constituting an Orbital Craft (OC) and a Lunar Craft (LC) that would carry a soft landing system up to Lunar Transfer Trajectory (LTT).
The target location for the lander-rover would be identified using data from instruments of Chandrayaan-1.
While ISRO will be developing the orbiter, it will be Russia’s job to make the lander and rover. Additional scientific payloads would be acquired from international scientific community.
“Next (now that design has been completed) we will go towards prototype building, which will be taken up next year,” Nair, also secretary in the Department of Space, said.
Nair said ISRO has learnt plenty of lessons from Chandrayaan-1 mission, particularly on the thermal and redundancy management fronts and would seek to improve systems in Chandrayaan-2, slated towards the end of 2012.
“I think we have got very valuable inputs on the heat radiation from the moon’s surface and so on. Accordingly, the thermal design of the future aircraft can be addressed,” he said. “Radiation is much beyond our expectations, so we will have to see how the radiation hardening has to be strengthened.”
“Then, in redundancy management also, there are some inputs which are available from Chandrayaan-1, which we will try to incorporate in Chandrayaan-2.”
Author: Mona, New Delhi
Image courtesy: NASA and ISRO websites
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