First Indian Moon Mission Chandrayaan lifted off this morning successfully
from Sriharikota launching pad (made by HEC, Ranchi). So far everything in
the Mission is working in a perfect manner and it ha got located in the
elliptical orbit.
Here's a link you might be interested in: Click on the link below to read
the full story
<http://www.ibnlive.com/news/chandrayaan-lifts-off-for-moon/76415-11.html>
CHANDRAYAAN LIFTS OFF FOR MOON
Published on Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 01:44, Updated on Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 06:35 in Sci-Tech section
Tags: Chandrayaan Countdown, Isro
Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh: India’s first unmanned flight to the moon blasted off from Sriharikota, off the Andhra Pradesh coast, early morning on Wednesday.
The launch was perfect and the space vehicle is going in the right direction.
A 44-metre-tall and 316-tonne rocket called the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV C11) carried the 1,380-kg lunar orbiter Chandrayaan 1 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at around 0620 hrs IST.
"Eighteen minutes into the flight the rocket will sling the spacecraft into the 255-km perigee (nearest point to earth) and 23,000 km apogee (farthest point from earth) path to script a new history in the annals of India's space odyssey," S Satish, director of ISRO’s Publications and Press Relations department, told IANS hours before the launch.
From there the spacecraft will be taken into more elliptical orbits, firing its onboard motor—technically called Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM)—towards the moon, 387,000 km from the earth.
Once the spacecraft nears the moon, the LAM will be fired in reverse to slow it down to enable the moon's gravity to capture Chandrayaan 1 into an elliptical orbit around the lunar poles.
Thereafter the spacecraft's orbit will be gradually lowered till it is 100 km above the moon's surface. That is expected to happen around November 8.
On November 14 the spacecraft will eject an important piece of luggage on to the moon's surface: the moon impact Probe (MIP).
Mission statement
A principal objective of Chandrayaan is to look for Helium 3, an isotope which is very rare on earth but is sought to power nuclear fusion and could be a valuable source of energy in the future, some scientists believe. It is thought to be more plentiful on the moon, but still rare and very difficult to extract.
The Rs 386-crore mission is also expected to carry out a detailed survey of the moon to look for precious metals and water. "We are going to get a three-dimensional atlas of the moon's surface, which will be used for chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface," Bhaskar Narayan, an ISRO director told Reuters.
While much of the technology involved in reaching the moon has not changed, analysts say current mapping equipment allows for the exploration of new areas, including below the surface.
Of the 11 instruments carried by Chandrayaan, five are Indian, three are from the European Space Agency, two from the US and one from Bulgaria.
NASA is sending up a Mini Synthetic Aperture Radar that can search for ice — an important resource for any human settlements — under the lunar poles.
India is the sixth nation to send a nation to send a mission to moon after the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan. The United States is the only nation to have landed a man on the lunar surface, doing so for the first time in 1969.
In 2003, China became the first Asian country to put its own astronauts into space. It followed that last month with its first spacewalk.
Last year China also blasted an old satellite into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile, the first such test ever conducted by any nation, including the United States and Russia.
(With inputs from IANS, Reuters and AP)
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