Chandrayaan 1, India's First Lunar Probe Options

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

http://www.newkerala.com/nkfullnews-1-150347.html

Chandrayaan-1 confirms presence of mini-magnetosphere on the Moon.

Happy reading.

[Bhas_From_India]

Chandrayaan-I detects ice deposits on moon - March 02, 2010 08:16 IST

http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/mar/02/...its-on-moon.htm

Scientists have detected more than 40 ice-filled craters in the moon's North Pole using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-I.

NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 2 to 15 km in diameter.

The finding would give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit, a NASA statement said, adding it is estimated that there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice in the craters.

"The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon," Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, said yesterday

... means many more 'flights' to moon

[Greg Hullender]

MSNBC is reporting NASA as claiming to have found at least 600,000,000 tons of water in the north polar region.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35653907/ns/te..._science-space/

That's quite a bit more than I was expecting!

--Greg

[Phil Stooke]

There might be a wee mathematical correction to be made to that number - just a few orders of magnitude. A bad metric conversion?

Phil

[elakdawalla]

FWIW, the 600 million metric ton figure was also mentioned by Paul Spudis in his presentation to the press yesterday afternoon. It's based on a one-to-one correspondence between locations with H measured by Lunar Prospector and locations of these ice-filled craters seen with Mini-SAR, and the assumption that there's at least 2 meters worth of nearly pure water ice in each of those craters.

Clearly one of the two numbers in the press release is wrong. Since Paul mentioned 600 million tons I think that is the right number.

[Phil Stooke]

Yes indeed, the NASA press release contained a horrible metric conversion error, but it turns out it was the 600 million metric tons figure that was correct. The other figure in the release is the one that was wrong.

Phil

[ugordan]

the NASA press release contained a horrible metric conversion error

When will they ever learn?

[Paolo]

An article on Indian space including Chandrayaan 1 and 2 in today's Aviation Week http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/sto..._p62-231468.xml

[Phil Stooke]

Ever since MIP impacted over 18 months ago I have been looking for a clear statement about where it hit the surface. Now I may have it at last (though I really want to see the last few images to confirm it).

This new paper:

Sridharan, R., Ahmed, S. M., Tirtha Pratim, D., Sreelatha, P., Pradeepkumar, P., Naik, N. and Gogulapati, S., 2010. The sunlit lunar atmosphere: A comprehensive study by CHACE on the Moon Impact Probe of Chandrayaan-1. Planet. Space Sci. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.pss.2010.07.027


says the MIP site is at c. 89 S, 30 W. It came down roughly along the 14 E meridian, but on a path that took it a bit west of the pole. This is earthward of the ridge connecting Shackleton and de Gerlache craters.

Phil

[peter59]

This PDS volume contains Chandrayaan-1 Lunar Orbiter (Ch-1) Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) raw and reduced image data, Optical Period 1, Level 1B.
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/volumes/m3.html

A lot of interesting material.
Example:
Part of M3G20090203T135512_V01_QL_B084.jpg

[Phil Stooke]

I have updated my Moon Landing Sites map to include the new location of MIP. Looking forward to the next thing I can mark on it... presumably Chang-e 2, either its end-of-mission impact which will probably be about the end of next year, or possibly a small lunar impactor it's reported to be carrying, if that report is correct. If so I assume that would occur this fall soon after the orbiter reaches the Moon.

This also includes a correction among the names thanks to a sharp-eyed person who emailed me. I always welcome corrections.

Phil

[ugordan]

Here's a "flyover" movie over one M3 swath, in visible color - 18 MB AVI, XviD codec. Source was M3G20081119T021733_V01_RDN.IMG and the output was rotated 180 deg. The entire swath is 304 x 28974 pixels (summation mode "global" so not the full resolution of the instrument) with 85 spectral channels returned. Starts over the night side, crossing the terminator, culminating over high sun terrain and ending when the phase angle began to increase.

The rows of hot pixels (the short wavelength channels are noisy) in the beginning inspired me for that particular soundtrack...

One snapshot:

[Pradeep]

A few data and paper releases from Chandrayaan-I from the last 3 months:

1. There is a NASA PDS data release on December 8: http://pds.nasa.gov/tools/subscription_ser...-20101208.shtml. The next scheduled data release is on January 15, 2011.
2. SARA has bought out a paper a month since October.
a. Dynamics of solar wind protons reflected by the Moon - http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.2065v1 (Oct. 11, 2010)
b. The Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer (SARA) Experiment Aboard Chandrayaan-1 Mission: Instrument and Observations - http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.1527 (Dec. 7, 2010)
c. First observation of a mini-magnetosphere above a lunar magnetic anomaly using energetic neutral atoms - http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.4442 (Nov. 19, 2010)
3. RADOM also has published results - Radiation Environment In Earth-Moon Space: Results From RADOM Experiment Onboard Chandrayaan-1 - http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.2014 (Dec. 9, 2010)

Pradeep

[Nirgal]

Thanks for the update, Pradeep !

do you have any information when the first data from the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) which I am particularly looking forward to will be released ?

there is a preview of TMC data published at the ISRO site (link) which looks very very promising (the announced 5-meter-per-pixel near-global DEM would be by far the best topographic map of the moon yet with resolution two times higher than SELENE/KAGUYA DTM and more than ten times higher than LOLA DTM ...

[Phil Stooke]

Don't get too carried away with the idea of a 5 m/pixel DTM. The spatial resolution of the stereo-derived DTM will really be equivalent to the spacing of tie points between the images used in the stereo model. That will be very good, but not as high as 5 m/pixel. Also, TM data are not global, and of course, no data in shadows. Still, it will be a very nice dataset.

Phil