Chandrayaan 1, India's First Lunar Probe Options

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

The truth always comes out, of course. It's impossible to hide anything.
I'm mad at the official explaination by ISRO. They said the following: "The spacecraft in this higher altitude will enable further studies on orbit perturbations, gravitational field variation of the Moon and also enable imaging lunar surface with a wider swath."

This is misleading and made us think that the orbit was was raised because there's science that need to be done. It's a coverup.

By the way I think I can understand why they did this.

EDIT: There's NO Coverup and ISRO didn't hide anything. Link: http://www.exfn.com/india-moon-craft-hit-by-heat-rise . It was announced that the raise of the orbit will be done if the problem worsens. Case solved.

[Pradeep]

When this issue was raised on the forum earlier - thermal issue being a contributing factor to the orbit raise - I sent out an email and got a response from the Project Director M Annadurai that the press release stated was the reason. As an Indian citizen, I believe his word against everything else. At a later date he did clarify that they struggled to keep it in orbit despite the heat issues and failed star sensor had informed PIs of the issue and had asked them to gather as much data as quickly as possible and the orbit was raised only after this was done.

Radiation is the cause for thermal problems on board Chandrayaan-I. Radiation being from the sun. It was assumed that the temperature at the altitude as a result of radiation would be 75 degrees C. I'm not sure where this data came from.

ISRO does have a lot to learn PR wise. The Indian media also has to learn about deep space mission reporting. It is ISRO's first step in this info hungry world created by NASA. I think I had an inkling of this huge pressure for ISRO to release info. I'm quite happy with data and images released thus far while also proving India's capability to reach the Moon at low cost.

Chandrayaan-II is now being developed at a cost of Rs. 425 crores ($82 mn) in 2013. ISRO hardly makes a mistake twice (case in point is the single PSLV failure) and I do hope they don't.

Political comments removed

[djellison]

I think we should probably draw a line under this discussion. The allegations being made are exceptionally serious and I don't want UMSF to be a platform to make them.

[Bhas_From_India]

Scientists to decode moon mission data

ESA said that its payload C1XS, an imaging x-ray spectrometer, developed along with UK’s Rutherford Appleton laboratory and Isro, has been able to identify calcium on the lunar surface. “There are indications of iron and titanium samples as well,” said Dr Koschny.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/N...how/5008790.cms

[Pradeep]

An August 10, 2009 update to the Chandrayaan-I's official website has updated and put together the results of its various experiments. This is a good step but I do hope the various papers they are presenting in one place.

Here are the results page from various instruments:
1. Terrain Mapping Camera
2. Hyper Spectral Imager
3. Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument:
4. Chandrayaan-I X-Ray Spectrometer:
5. Radiation Dose Monitor Experiment

The European and Planetary Science Congress has also published some of the paper abstracts: ALL ARE PDFs
1. Observations by the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer (SARA) on board of Chandrayaan-1
2. Initial results from the C1XS x-ray spectrometer on Chandrayaan-1

The page has results from various experiments on Kaguya, SMART-1 etc. and might be of interest to readers here.

Also, the Indian media came in for criticism from ESA recently on their reporting of the Chandrayaan 1 and he clarified with some results of C1XS and SARA. Some papers carried C1XS while others carried SARA.

Public apologies if the earlier post went haywire. If all goes well, I'll get to meet A P J Abdul Kalam and Annadurai during their visit to Mumbai on September 26, 2009.

[Bhas_From_India]

Did Chandrayaan find water on Moon’s surface?

An announcement is expected at a media interaction scheduled for Thursday at the Nasa headquarters in Washington DC featuring well-known lunar scientist Carle Pieters from Brown University. She is the principal investigator for M3.

A spokesman for Brown University also declined comment, saying there was an embargo. "It will be a major announcement of a major discovery and is something great for Chandrayaan. It will mark a major leap for India’s space programme," he said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/in...how/5044827.cms

NOTE: Not confirmed yet. But I couldn't wait..

[Bhas_From_India]

Water discovered on moon?: “A lot of it actually”
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/23/stories/2009092357770100.htm

NASA Briefing To Reveal Evidence of Water on the Moon - Lots of It
http://www.moontoday.net/news/viewnews.html?id=1350

[Hungry4info]

Interesting, hopefully it's not just rumors.
If indeed the press conference is about water, I'm not going to hold my breath too much until after LCROSS does its thing. Not to say that I don't trust NASA's M3 instrument or India's Chandrayaan-1.

[Phil Stooke]

It's obviously going to be a very interesting announcement... but it will be difficult to reconcile with the Apollo sample evidence of a totally water-free environment for billions of years (no alteration products etc.) How can we have water everywhere and nowhere at the same time? Maybe what is being detected remotely (I mean the Cassini and EPOXI data, not MMM) is ephemeral and exospheric, with essentially no effect on the regolith. Then some of that migrates to cooler areas where it can be preserved. Resolving these contradictions will be very interesting.

Is NASA hiding old data? Well, wouldn't that be the PIs? If Faith Vilas's experience with Galileo data is anything to go by, the older data might have been very hard to publish earlier. Now it suddenly becomes feasible to publish it. That looks like a classic case of paradigm shift. Interesting!

Phil

[Astro0]

Sounds like it's being widely reported now that there's water on the Moon.

EDIT: Please note that I decided to pull the link to the report.

[Phil Stooke]

Well, I guess my question is answered already... the Apollo samples did contain a bit of water, but it was interpreted as contamination. Funny how we can be so certain about things that aren't true! I should be used to being wrong by now.

Phil

[Greg Hullender]

This is one of those times when it feels GREAT to be wrong, though. :-)

--Greg

[peter59]

A lot of new information about the Mare Orientale on the basis of data from Chandrayaan-1 and LRO :

CHARACTERISTICS, AFFINITIES AND AGES OF VOLCANIC DEPOSITS ASSOCIATED WITH THE ORIENTALE BASIN FROM CHANDRAYAAN-1 MOON MINERALOGY MAPPER (M3) DATA: MARE STRATIGRAPHY.

THE LUNAR ORIENTALE BASIN: STRUCTURE AND MINERALOGY FROM CHANDRAYAAN-1 MOON MINERALOGY MAPPER (M3) DATA.

CHARACTERISTICS OF VOLCANIC DEPOSITS ASSOCIATED WITH THE ORIENTALE BASIN FROM CHANDRAYAAN-1 MOON MINERALOGY MAPPER (M3) DATA: THE ORIENTALE DARK RING

MARE VOLCANIC DEPOSITS IN THE ORIENTALE BASIN: DISTRIBUTION AND THICKNESSES FROM CHANDRAYAAN-1 MOON MINERALOGY MAPPER (M3) DATA.

MORPHOLOGY AND DISTRIBUTION OF VOLCANIC VENTS IN THE ORIENTALE BASIN FROM CHANDRAYAAN-1 MOON MINERALOGY MAPPER (M3) DATA

LUNAR ORIENTALE BASIN AND VICINITY: TOPOGRAPHIC CHARACTERIZATION FROM LUNAR ORBITING LASER ALTIMETER (LOLA) DATA.

[dshaffer]

Here is a clip on Youtube - from NDTV (New Delhi TV) reporting on the first 100 days of operation and the meeting in Bangalore - the one we hoped would lead to press releases etc. The clip includes images from the impact probe, showing how the rotating probe took images during descent.

Phil

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f5qLMPIfe4

Were the full set of probe images ever released?

[Phil Stooke]

Not yet, but ISRO people have said the full Chandrayaan-1 dataset will be available online early next year. Also Kaguya data are supposed to be released in November this year.

Phil