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Mission Somayana India Marches towards Moon

On August 15, 2003 Indian Prime Minister, during his Independence Day address to the nation, announced the long awaited Chandrayan/ Somayana’s 1 mission which represents India’s, foray into planetary exploration era in the coming decades. Owing to India’s indigenously developed launch vehicle and spacecraft capabilities it is confident of undertaking a complex space mission. This mission will provide a unique opportunity for frontier scientific research. Chandryan I is visualised to be the forerunner to be more ambitious planetary mission in the years to come including landing robots on the moon and visits by Indian spacecraft to their planets in the solar system. The Chandryan is expected to be ready for launch by 2008.

There have been more than 60 missions to the moon so far and the USA. China and the European Space Agency are planning more missions. Of the 60 missions between 1965 and 1970 US missions include the Ranger Lunar Orbiter, Survey, Clementine and Lunar Prospector. The high point of the US programme was when 6 of its Apollo missions landed human beings on the moon. The Japanese mission Hiten, launched in 1990 performed a sophisticated circumnavigation and was directed to impact on the far-south side of the moon.

Somayana will observe the moon from various angles and beam back pictures on its chemical, physical and physico-chemical characteristics. The orbiter will also survey the minerals on the moon. The information received is expected to throw light on the origin and evolution of the moon and other bodies of the planetary system and evolution of life on the earth. It is also the economic reasons that drive lunar mission now. The moon has an abundance of helium which is going to be the future source of energy. Another objective of the mission is to improve our knowledge of the moon’s gravity field. For, its gravity field has not been understood fully despite so many missions to study it. The main objectives of Chandrayan I includes obtaining images of the moon’s surface using high resolution remote sensing instruments in the visible near infrared low and high energy x-ray regions. Furthermore considering the interest expressed by the international scientific community a provision has also been made to accommodate instruments from other countries. More than receiving information about the Moon’s history the mission will provide ISRO a platform to undertake interplanetary expeditions. The moon mission is a stepping stone to other missions. It will be a platform to go to other planets. The images of the moon can be used to do interplanetary research.

The moon mission envisages placing a 525 kg satellite in a polarorbit-100 km above the moon. The satellite will be launched using a modified version of India’s indigenous Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The spacecraft will initially be launched into Geo synchronous Transfer orbit. It will subsequently be set into its final lunar orbit using its own propulsion system. The orbiter will take about five days to reach the moon which is 3.84 lakh km away and will have a life of two years. The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvanantpuram will build the PSLV. The ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) in Bangalore will fabricate the orbiter. The mission will cost about Rs. 300 crores.

The scientific group called the National Lunar Study Task force is headed by Dr. George Joseph, former Director Space Application Centre Ahmedabad and consists of ISRO’s launch vehicle technologists, satellite engineers and scientists belonging to various disciplines from other institutions. ISRO’s orbiter will weigh 1050 kg in the geo-synchronous transfer orbit only but only 525 kg in the lunar orbit. It will carry 80 kg of scientific payload. ISRO will keep 50 to 60 kg of the payload for itself to conduct experiments. The remaining 10 to 20 kg will be available for international community or for academic institutions in the country. ISRO has already received inquiries from several countries to use part of the payload to conduct experiments.

There are several scientific and technological challenges to make this mission successful. The moon’s gravity is not uniformly spread as on the earth. Hence precise orbit manoeuvering capabilities should be engineered into the orbiter to prevent it from falling. Navigating the spacecraft, controlling it and communicating with it will be among the technological challenges of the moon mission. So far ISRO scientist’s communication with satellites have been limited to giving command to INSAT’s when they reach the GTO (36000 km above the earth). The distance to the moon is of many times more and ISRO’s engineers and scientists must be able to track command and guide the spacecraft over such a long distance.

Chandrayan aims to obtain a chemical map of the entire lunar surface. The data from the mission will be used to create a 3 dimensional atlas of regions of interest using high resolution remote sensing. The area selected for the focused study are the north and south polar regions (believed to contain ice), the lunar South Poles and Aitken basin–an ancient crater impact area. At the end of the mission Indian Space Research Organization expects to provide the scientific community an improved model of the moon’s gravity. This would be made possible with the highly accurate measurements of moon’s topography by a lunar laser ranging instrument.