The Hindu
Bangalore, Sep 19: Having passed a rigorous test to gauge its resilience against harsh space environment, Chandrayaan I, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) first mission to the moon, now awaits a launch date to begin its 4,00,000-km voyage.
The first possible date for Chandrayaan’s launch could be October 19, said T.K. Alex, director of the ISRO Satellite Centre.
The first “launch window” could be between October 19 and 28, said Dr. Alex, addressing presspersons at the satellite centre here on Thursday. If the weather does not permit this, the launch could take place in November or December, he added.
“Our goal at the moment is to reach the satellite to the moon’s orbit on either November 8 or November 23 when the orbital planes of the spacecraft and that of the moon will intersect,” said M. Annadurai, Project Director for Chandrayaan.
The satellite will undergo two more tests next week — a vibrations test and an acoustics test — to see how the systems hold up. In the vibrations test, the satellite will be “shaken”, much the same way that it will be during launch, and in the acoustics test, the satellite will be exposed to high levels of noise that the launch will produce, said Dr. Alex.
The ambitious lunar mission will bring back clues about the origin of the moon, gather evidence of the presence of water and capture the clearest pictures yet of the moon’s topography, he said.
‘Piggyback payload’
An important objective is to map material that may be of economic value such as uranium and thorium, said P. Sreekumar, head of the Space Astronomy Instrumentation Division. “We will be covering the entire electromagnetic spectrum through the 11 experiments on board,” he said.
The 11 experiments will include a “Moon Impact Probe” which is a “piggyback” payload that will detach itself and impact the moon with three instruments — a video camera, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer, he said.
The 1,380-kg satellite will have a PSLV launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota and using its own rocket engine, will be placed into an orbit around the moon at a distance of 100 km from the lunar surface.