Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Indian Chandrayaan-I satellite launched successfully

India joins the bandwagon of nations like US, Russia, Europe, China and Japan in exploring the outer space.

Though inclement weather and heavy rains cast doubts over the launch till late yesterday night, a gritty ISRO team went ahead with the much awaited launch, working against all odds. After a 52-hour count down, PSLV-C11 finally lifted off from the second launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota (SHAR) at 6.22 am IST. Perfect performances of all the sub-systems and parameters of the launch vehicle have finally put the 1380 Kg Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft into an elliptical transfer orbit at an altitude of 255 Km with an apogee of 22,860 Km.

Touted to be the most complex spacecraft ever built in the world, Chandrayaan-1 is India’s first spacecraft mission beyond earth’s orbit. It aims to further expand India’s knowledge about earth’s only natural satellite – the moon. With 11 scientific instruments and very-well defined objectives, Chandrayaan-1 mission intends to put an unmanned spacecraft into an orbit around the moon for a period of two years, at the end of the entire surface of the moon is expected to be mapped. This objective will be achieved by remote sensing the moon in visible, near infrared, microwave and X-ray regions of the EM spectrum.

The ultimate target is to come up with a 3D atlas of the lunar surface and chemical and mineralogical map of the entire lunar surface.

Source: gisdevelopment.net

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