Chandrayaan-1, India’s first unmanned spacecraft mission to moon, entered lunar orbit today (November 8, 2008).
http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Nov08_2008.htmChandrayaan-1, India’s first unmanned spacecraft mission to moon, entered lunar orbit today (November 8, 2008). This is the first time that an Indian built spacecraft has broken away from the Earth’s gravitational field and reached the moon. This historic event occurred following the firing of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft’s liquid engine at 16:51 IST for a duration of 817 seconds. The highly complex ‘lunar orbit insertion manoeuvre’ was performed from Chandrayaan-1 Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network at Bangalore. Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu supported the crucial task of transmitting commands and continuously monitoring this vital event with two dish antennas, one measuring 18 m and the other 32 m. Chandrayaan-1’s liquid engine was fired when the spacecraft passed at a distance of about 500 km from the moon to reduce its velocity to enable lunar gravity to capture it into an orbit around the moon. The spacecraft is now orbiting the moon in an elliptical orbit that passes over the polar regions of the moon. The nearest point of this orbit (periselene) lies at a distance of about 504 km from the moon’s surface while the farthest point (aposelene) lies at about 7502 km. Chandrayaan-1 takes about 11 hours to go round the moon once in this orbit. The performance of all the systems onboard Chandrayaan-1 is normal. In the coming days, the height of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft’s orbit around the moon will be carefully reduced in steps to achieve a final polar orbit of about 100 km height from the moon’s surface. Following this, the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) of the spacecraft will be released to hit the lunar surface. Later, the other scientific instruments will be turned ON sequentially leading to the normal phase of the mission. It may be recalled that Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was launched on October 22, 2008 by PSLV-C11 from India’s spaceport at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. As intended, PSLV placed the spacecraft in a highly oval shaped orbit with a perigee (nearest point to Earth) of 255 km and an apogee (farthest point to Earth) of 22,860 km. In the past two weeks, the liquid engine of Chandrayaan-1 has been successfully fired five times at opportune moments to increase the apogee height, first to 37,900 km, then to 74,715 km, later to 164,600 km, after that to 267,000 km and finally to 380,000km, as planned. During this period, the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC), one of the eleven payloads (scientific instruments) of the spacecraft, was successfully operated twice to take the pictures, first of the Earth, and then moon. With today’s successful manoeuvre, India becomes the fifth country to send a spacecraft to Moon. The other countries, which have sent spacecraft to Moon, are the United States, former Soviet Union, Japan and China. Besides, the European Space Agency (ESA), a consortium of 17 countries, has also sent a spacecraft to moon.
Why would they release a picture with such poor resolution? And why does it have such poor resolution? I can get a better view with binoculars from earth.
Chandrayaan-1 gets further closer to moon Bangalore (PTI): Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft on Tuesday moved closer to the Moon with ISRO scientists carrying out orbit reduction manoeuvre at 18:30 hours for a duration of 31 seconds. "The current orbit of Chandrayaan-1 is 255.3 km (the farthest distance from the moon) X 101.3 km (nearest distance to the moon). The orbital period is 2.09 hours", ISRO spokesperson S Satish told PTI. Further manoeuvres are planned in the coming days to bring the spacecraft to its final circular orbit of 100 kms above the moon's surface, Satish said.
Why would they release a picture with such poor resolution?
And why does it have such poor resolution? I can get a better view with binoculars from earth.
Bangalore, November 13: The Indian flag is all set to mark its presence on the lunar surface for the first time on Friday as a moon probe with the tri-colour painted on it will detach from Chandrayaan-1 and descend onto the earth's natural satellite."The Moon Impact Probe is expected to be detached (from Chandrayaan-1) at around 10 pm on Friday," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spokesperson S Satish said...."During its 20-minute descend to the moon's surface, MIP will take pictures and transmit these back to the ground," he said. ...the primary objective of MIP is to demonstrate the technologies required for landing a probe at the desired location on the moon.The probe will help qualify some of the technologies related to future soft landing missions. This apart, scientific exploration of the moon at close distance is also intended using MIP.The 29-kg MIP consists of a C-band Radar Altimeter for continuous measurement of altitude of the probe, a video imaging system for acquiring images of the surface of moon from the descending probe and a mass spectrometer for measuring the constituents of extremely thin lunar atmosphere during its 20-minute descent to the lunar surface.ISRO officials are confident that the MIP would withstand the impact once it hits the lunar surface. "Most probably it will not disintegrate," an ISRO official said
at an altitude of 100 kilometres, ISRO will issue commands to re-orient and eject the MIP, which has an onboard motor that will fire for two seconds to slow the MIP's descent velocity to 75 metres per second. During its descent to the lunar surface, the MIP will activate its video-camera which will capture images of the lunar surface that will be instrumental in ISRO's decision to pick a suitable landing site for Chandrayaan-2's rover.The MIP's altimeter will measure its altitude from the Moon's surface every second, while a third instrument, the mass spectrometer, will sense the moon's atmospheric constituents as it free falls to the lunar surface. All data would be transmitted to Chandrayaan-1 till the MIP crash-lands on the moon, which in turn would be beamed back to earth.
Possible timetag for the drop of MIP : ( about 1630GMT on 14/NOV )QuoteBangalore, November 13: The Indian flag is all set to mark its presence on the lunar surface for the first time on Friday as a moon probe with the tri-colour painted on it will detach from Chandrayaan-1 and descend onto the earth's natural satellite."The Moon Impact Probe is expected to be detached (from Chandrayaan-1) at around 10 pm on Friday," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spokesperson S Satish said...."During its 20-minute descend to the moon's surface, MIP will take pictures and transmit these back to the ground," he said. ...the primary objective of MIP is to demonstrate the technologies required for landing a probe at the desired location on the moon.The probe will help qualify some of the technologies related to future soft landing missions. This apart, scientific exploration of the moon at close distance is also intended using MIP.The 29-kg MIP consists of a C-band Radar Altimeter for continuous measurement of altitude of the probe, a video imaging system for acquiring images of the surface of moon from the descending probe and a mass spectrometer for measuring the constituents of extremely thin lunar atmosphere during its 20-minute descent to the lunar surface.ISRO officials are confident that the MIP would withstand the impact once it hits the lunar surface. "Most probably it will not disintegrate," an ISRO official saidAlso this:Quoteat an altitude of 100 kilometres, ISRO will issue commands to re-orient and eject the MIP, which has an onboard motor that will fire for two seconds to slow the MIP's descent velocity to 75 metres per second. During its descent to the lunar surface, the MIP will activate its video-camera which will capture images of the lunar surface that will be instrumental in ISRO's decision to pick a suitable landing site for Chandrayaan-2's rover.The MIP's altimeter will measure its altitude from the Moon's surface every second, while a third instrument, the mass spectrometer, will sense the moon's atmospheric constituents as it free falls to the lunar surface. All data would be transmitted to Chandrayaan-1 till the MIP crash-lands on the moon, which in turn would be beamed back to earth.
