Chandrayaan and India’s space odyssey

Chandrayaan, India and India’s space odyssey. Today, India is one of the very few countries that have significant achievements to their credit in the arena of space. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has designed, developed and built a variety of satellites. And, it has successfully launched many of them into their intended orbits. More importantly, the country has used its satellites for the rapid expansion of its national infrastructure including telecommunications, TV broadcasting, weather monitoring, education, public health, agriculture and rural development. More recently, India has provided many space-based services including launch services to foreign customers on a competitive basis. With ample experience and many successes in Earth orbit, ISRO took up Chandrayaan-1, its first bold step beyond Earth orbit into deep space.

Chandrayaan-1: The Goals

The primary objectives of Chandrayaan-1 are:
1. To expand scientific knowledge about the moon
2. To upgrade India's technological capability
3. To provide challenging opportunities for planetary
research to the younger generation of Indian scientists
Chandrayaan-1 aims to achieve these well defined objectives through high resolution remote sensing of the moon in the visible, near infrared, microwave and X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. With this, preparation of a 3-dimensional atlas of the lunar surface and chemical mapping of entire lunar surface is envisaged.

Chandrayaan-1: The Payloads

Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft carried 11 payloads (scientific instruments) to achieve its objectives. The instruments were carefully chosen on the basis of many scientific and technical considerations as well as their complementary/supplementary nature.

Of them, five instruments were entirely designed and developed in India, three instruments from European Space Agency (one of which was developed jointly with India and the other with Indian contribution), one from Bulgaria and two from the United States. Thus, Chandrayaan-1 is a classic example of international cooperation that has characterised the global space exploration programmes of the post cold war era.

The Indian payloads are:
1. Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC): The aim of this instrument is to completely map the topography of the moon. The camera works in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum and captures black and white stereo images. It images a strip of lunar surface which is 20 km wide and resolution of this CCD camera is 5 m. Such high resolution imaging helps in better understanding of the lunar evolution process as well as in the detailed study of the regions of scientific interest. When used in conjunction with data from Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI), it can help in better understanding of the lunar gravitational field as well. TMC was built by ISRO's Space Applications Centre (SAC) of Ahmedabad.

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