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India’s Lunar Mission

CHANDRAYAAN-1
India’s lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan has already started releasing images of
the moon surface. Let’s review its journey, payloads and mission objectives

Dr S.S. VERMA the former Soviet Union and the ied at another building was moved

I

European Space Agency comprising to the vehicle building to couple
ndia’s first unmanned moon 17 countries already have their flags Chandrayaan-1 with the launch
mission from Sriharikota (Nel- on the moon and Chandrayaan-1 vehicle and with all the payloads
lore district in Andhra Pradesh) is the world’s 68th mission. Chan- it was then moved to the launch
with orbiting spacecraft Chan- drayaan-1 was assembled to have eleven pad. The successful flight of MIP is
drayaan-1 (moon craft) tak- payloads. The spacecraft being read- supposed to prepare for the second
ing the moon impact Indian moon mission,
probe (MIP) has been Chandrayaan-2, which
launched successfully. will carry a Russian rov-
The MIP having Indian er and a lander slated
tricolour painted on all for lift-off between 2010
its sides landed on the and 2012.
moon surface after hav- Let’s review Chan-
ing flown 386,000 km drayaan’s journey,
from the earth, making payloads and mission
India the fourth country objectives.
on the earth to land a
probe on the moon. In- Space probe
dian scientists involved A space probe is a sci-
in particular and all the entific space explora-
public in general are tion mission in which
very proud of this sci- a robotic spacecraft
entific and technological leaves the gravity well
endeavor. of the earth and ap-
According to Dr G. proaches the moon or
Madhavan Nair, chief enters interplanetary
of Indian Space Re- or interstellar space;
search Organisation approximately twenty
(ISRO), “We have given are currently existant.
moon to India.” Every The space agencies of
concerned Indian has the USSR (now Rus-
traveled all the way sia and Ukraine), the
to the moon virtual- United States, the Eu-
ly along the MIP. The ropean Union, Japan
MIP has already sent and China have in the
images with high reso- aggregate launched
lution of the moon for probes to several plan-
analysis. ets and moons of the
The United States, Fig. 1: Launch of Chandrayaan-1 solar system as well

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Fig. 2: The mission at a glance
as to a number of asteroids and
comets.
A space probe destined for a plan-
et or other astronomical body can
be classified as a ‘flyby,’ ‘impactor,’
‘orbiter’ or ‘lander’ mission. Histori-
cally, flyby missions proved easiest
to accomplish, as these did not re-
quire the precise navigation needed
for an impact, nor the additional
propulsion to conduct a manoeuvre
to enter the orbit. Upon landing
some landers have released ‘rovers,’
which travel across the surface of the
astronomical body upon which they
have landed.
Once a probe has left the vicinity
of the earth, its trajectory is likely to
take it along an orbit around the sun
similar to the earth’s orbit. To reach
another planet, the conceptually sim-
plest means is to execute a Hohmann
transfer orbit manoeuvre.
More complex techniques, such as
gravitational slingshots, can be more
efficient, though these may require the
probe to spend more time in transit. A
technique using very little propulsion,
but possibly requiring a considerable
amount of time, is to follow a trajec-
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lites into the geostationary
transfer orbit. The reliability
and versatility of the PSLV
is proven by the fact that
it has launched 30 space-
crafts (14 Indian and 16
from other countries) into
a variety of orbits so far. In
April 2008, it successfully
launched ten satellites in
one go, breaking the world
record held by Russia.
The first Indian moon
mission was proposed
to be a lunar polar or-
biter at an altitude of about
100 km from the lunar
surface.  Considering the
maturity of PSLV dem-
onstrated through PSLV-
C4/KALPANA-1 mission,
PSLV was chosen for the
first lunar mission.
The upgraded version
tory on the interplanetary transport of PSLV, viz, PSLV-C11, which has
network. a liftoff weight of 316 tonnes and is
44.4m tall, was used to inject a 1304kg
Launch vehicle journey mass spacecraft at 240×24,000km orbit.
The polar satellite launch vehicle, The corresponding spacecraft mass
usually known by its abbreviation was 590 kg when the target lunar orbit
‘PSLV,’ is an expendable launch sys- of 100 km was achieved.
tem operated by the Indian Space The PSLVC 11, also called PSLV-XL
Research Organisation (ISRO). It was because of the increased weight of the
developed to allow India to launch its six strap-on motors, soared into the
Indian remote sensing (IRS) satellites sky from the second launch pad at the
into sun synchronous orbits—a service Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriha-
that was, until the advent of the PSLV, rikota. It traveled to the vicinity of the
commercially viable only from Russia. moon by following the lunar transfer
PSLV can also launch small-size satel- trajectory (LTT). 
Chandrayaan beams back 40,000 images in 75 days
Chandrayaan-1 has transmitted more than 40,000 images of different types since its
launch on October 22, 2008, which many in ISRO believe is quite a record compared to
the lunar flights of other nations. ISRO officials estimated that if more than 40,000 images
have been transmitted by Chandrayaan’s cameras in 75 days, it worked out to nearly 535
images being sent daily. They are first transmitted to Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu
near Bengaluru, from where they are flashed to ISRO’s telemetry, tracking and command
network at Bengaluru.
Some of these images have a resolution of up to five metres providing a sharp and clear
picture of the moon’s surface. In comparison, many images sent by some of the other
missions had a 100-metre resolution.
On November 26, the indigenous terrain mapping camera, which was first activated on
October 29, 2008, took shots of peaks along with craters. This came as a surprise to ISRO
officials because the moon consists mostly of craters.
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The Chandrayaan-1 mission is aimed at high-
resolution remote sensing of the moon in visible,
near-infrared, low-energy X-ray and high-energy
X-ray regions.
At first, Chandrayaan-1 reached a
highly elliptical orbit. After encircling
the earth for a while, the spacecraft was
taken into two more elliptical orbits
whose apogees were still higher at
37,000 km and 73,000 km, respectively.
This all was done at a very precise mo-
ment by firing the spacecraft’s liquid ap-
ogee motor (LAM) when the spacecraft
was near perigee. Subsequently, the
LAM was fired to take the spacecraft to
a high orbit whose apogee lied at about
387,000 km. When the Chandrayaan-1
reached the vicinity of the moon, the
spacecraft was oriented in a particular
way and its LAM was fired again to
slow down the spacecraft sufficiently
to enable the gravity of the moon to
acquire it into an elliptical orbit.
About 20 days from the date of
launch, Chandrayaan-1 was in the
required moon orbit. When the orbital
height of Chandrayaan-1 was lowered
to its intended 100km height from the
lunar surface, the MIP was ejected from
Chandrayaan-1 at the earliest on to the
lunar surface in a chosen area.
The spacecraft
The spacecraft for lunar mission is
cuboid in shape with each side approx-
imately 1.50 metres. It accommodates
eleven science payloads. The 3-axis sta-
bilised spacecraft uses two star sensors,
gyros and four reaction wheels.
A canted single-sided solar ar-
ray will provide the required power
during all phases of the mission. This
deployable solar array consisting of a
single panel generates 700W of peak
power. The solar array along with yoke
was stowed on the south deck of the
spacecraft in the launch phase. During
eclipse, the spacecraft was powered
by lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. After
deployment, the solar panel plane was
canted by 30º to the spacecraft pitch
axis.
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The spacecraft employs an X-band,
0.7m diameter parabolic antenna for
payload data transmission. The anten-
na employs a dual gimbal mechanism
to track the earth station when the
spacecraft is in lunar orbit.
The spacecraft uses a bipropellant
integrated propulsion system to reach
the lunar orbit as well as orbit and
attitude maintenance while orbiting
the moon. The propulsion system car-
ries the required propellant for a mis-
sion life of two years, with adequate
margin.
The telemetry, tracking and com-
mand communication is in S-band
frequency. The scientific payload data
transmission is in X-band frequency.
The spacecraft has three solidstate
recorders (SSRs) on board to record
data from various payloads. SSR-1
will store science payload data and has
capability of storing 32GB data. SSR-2
will store science payload data along
with spacecraft attitude information
(gyro and star sensor), satellite house-
keeping and other auxiliary data. The
storage capacity of SSR-2 is 8 GB. M3
(moon mineralogy mapper) payload
has an independent SSR with 10GB
capacity.
Scientific payloads
The indigenously developed payloads
are:
1. Terrain-mapping stereo camera
in the panchromatic band, having 5m
spatial resolution and 20km swath
2. Hyper-spectral imaging camera
operating in the 400-950nm band with
a spectral resolution of 15 nm and
spatial resolution of 80 metres with a
swath of 20 km
3. Lunar laser-ranging instrument
with height resolution of about 10
metres
4. High-energy X-ray spectrom-
eter using cadmium-zinc-telluride
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Fig. 3: The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft
(CdZnTe) detector in the 30-250 keV
energy region with spatial resolution
of 40 km
5. Moon impact probe as piggy-
back on the main orbiter of the Chan-
drayaan-1 spacecraft which impacted
on the surface of the moon
The imported payloads on-board
Chandrayaan-1 are:
1. Chandrayaan-1 X-ray spectrom-
eter through ESA—a collaboration
between Rutherford Appleton Labora-
tory, the UK and ISRO Satellite Centre,
ISRO. Part of this payload was rede-
signed by the ISRO to suit scientific
objectives of Chandrayaan-1
2. Near-infrared spectrometer (SIR-
2) from Max Plank Institute, Lindau,
Germany, through ESA
3. Sub-keV atom-reflecting analyser
through ESA, from Swedish Institute
of Space Physics, Sweden, and Space
Physics Laboratory, Vikram Sarabhai
Space Centre, ISRO. The data process-
ing unit of this payload was designed
and developed by the ISRO, while
Swedish Institute of Space Physics
developed the payload
4. Radiation-dose monitor from
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
5. Miniature synthetic aperture
radar (MiniSAR) from Applied Physics
Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University,
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and Naval Air Warfare Centre, USA,
through NASA
6. Moon mineralogy mapper from
Brown University and Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, USA, through NASA
Moon impact probe
The moon impact probe is slightly
smaller than a TV cabinet and weighs
a bit more than a school-going kid, but
there’s a lot tucked away inside it. The
MIP detached from the Chandrayaan
a 100 km above the moon. The 29kg
moon impact probe—a payload de-
veloped by the Vikram Sarabhai Space
Centre at Thiruvananthapuram—will
help identify future landing sites on
the moon and also aid in scientific
exploration of the lunar surface. The
dimensions of the impact probe are
375×375×470 mm3.
The three major payloads in the
MIP are:
1. Radar altimeter to measure the
altitude of the moon impact probe
above the lunar surface and qualify
technologies for future landing mis-
sions. The operating frequency band is
4.3 GHz±100 MHz
2. Video imaging system to acquire
images of the surface of the moon
from the descending probe. The video
imaging system consists of an ana-
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logue CCD camera along with a video
decoder
3. A state-of-the-art quadrupole
mass spectrometer with a mass resolu-
tion of 0.5 amu. It is sensitive to partial
pressure of the order of 10-15 torr for
measuring the constituents of tenuous
lunar atmosphere during descent
In addition to the instruments, the
separation system, the de-boost spin
and de-spin motors, it comprises the
avionics system and thermal control
system. The avionics system supports
the payloads and provides communi-
cation link between the moon impact
probe and the main orbiter, from
separation to impact, and provides a
database useful for future soft landing.
The mission envisages collection of all
the instrument data during descent
and transmission to the main orbiter,
which, in turn, will transmit it to the
ground station during visible phases.
Mission objectives
1. To harness the science payloads,
lunar craft and the launch vehicle with
suitable ground support systems in-
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cluding deep space station
2. To realise the integration and
testing, launch into the lunar polar
orbit of about 100 km, in-orbit opera-
tion of experiments, communication/
telecommand, telemetry data recep-
tion, quick-look analysis of data and
archival for scientific utilisation by an
identified group of scientists
Scientific objectives
The Chandrayaan-1 mission is aimed
at high-resolution remote sensing of
the moon in visible, near-infrared, low-
energy X-ray and high-energy X-ray
regions. Specifically, the objectives are:
1. To prepare a three-dimensional
atlas (with a high spatial and altitude
resolution of 5-10 metres) of both near
and far sides of the moon
2. To conduct chemical and min-
eralogical mapping of the entire lunar
surface for distribution of elements
such as magnesium, aluminium, sili-
con, calcium, iron and titanium with a
spatial resolution of about 25 km and
high-atomic-number elements such as
radon, uranium and thorium with a
spatial resolution of about 20 km
Simultaneous photo geological and
chemical mapping will enable identi-
fication of different geological units,
which will test the early evolutionary
history of the moon and help in deter-
mining the nature and stratigraphy of
the lunar crust.
Next in line: Chandrayaan-2
ISRO is also planning a second version
of Chandrayaan named Chandrayaan-
2. According to ISRO chairman G.
Madhavan Nair, “The ISRO hopes to
land a motorised rover on the Moon
in 2012, as a part of its second Chan-
drayaan mission. The rover will be
designed to move on wheels on the lu-
nar surface, pick up samples of soil or
rocks, do on-site chemical analysis and
send the data to the mother-spacecraft
Chandrayaan-2, which will be orbiting
above. Chandrayaan-2 will transmit
the data to the earth.” 
The author is from Department of Physics,
S.L.I.E.T. (deemed to be university), Longowal,
Distict Sangrur, Punjab
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