[X] My Assistant

[callisto]

Chandrayaan and LRO are expected to work in tandem in lunar orbit.
Radar signals sent from Mini-SAR on the chandrayaan are expected to picked up my the Mini-RF on the LRO.
I read this in todays paper but cant find the article.NASA and ISRO officials are working it out.They said that such a joint experiment will boost their chances of finding water-ice.

[Phil Stooke]

Yes, it's a bistatic radar experiment - one spacecraft transmits a signal which is reflected off the surface and picked up by the other. It's been done before with the reflected signal detected on Earth, but that is very limited in geometry. Using two spacecraft opens up a much wider range of observations.

Phil

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

Mini-RF Litho:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/352304main_mini-rf_litho.pdf

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

New images from Chandrayaan-1:

http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/ImageMoon.htm

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

http://isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/ImageMoon.htm

Even more images have been published today!

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pune/Ch...how/4618508.cms

According to this publication, analysis of the data is expected to come out with in six months.

There's something more interesting: It's said that there are some signals of water!

[marsbug]

I hate to be a misery Zvezdichko but it sounds to me like he could be talking about the controversial signs of water already found there by other space probes. I hope I'm wrong though, it's very exciting if he's not!

[Pradeep]

Phil Stooke said: Presumably this is the long-term fix for the earlier problem of overheating. It follows that they would have planned it since entering orbit, not before arrival. None of the investigations will be helped by being higher, except that the field of view (swath width) for the various cameras will be wider.

I put this question to the moon at isro dot gov dot in id, which is a public email id given for questions related to Chandrayaan 1 on its website. I got a reply from the Mission Director, M Annadurai himself. In relation to the thermal issue he replied that these were initial problems they faced in lunar orbits and those were fixed and overcome. He said, the reason for orbit raising was as given in the press release -> http://isro.gov.in/pressrelease/May20_2009.htm

So, essentially, as of January, Chandrayaan 1 has been performing as per expectations and has obtained 4 TB of data. Also, today is a great day for us. We hope to catch Kaguya crash tonight. And for a brief moment (till LRO gets up there), we will be the only country in orbit around the Moon. (Yippee etc.).

I've also heard that Chandrayaan 1 will be tracking the Kaguya crash. It's going to be at midnight our time.

Brief request: Please write to the above email id before geting carried away by speculation. They may not be as prompt as NASA or ESA but they do get around to answering all emails.

Pradeep

[Pradeep]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pune/Ch...how/4618508.cms

According to this publication, analysis of the data is expected to come out with in six months.

There's something more interesting: It's said that there are some signals of water!

I think that Mr. Nair is repeating the earlier claim from M3 (?) about confirming presence of water. If you're in India doing outreach, you would now that it's important to be repetitive since many of the people would not be aware of the results beyond the fact that we have a lunar probe up there. So, you tend to repeat it as often as you can so that atleast someone will remember. It might also have been a quote when Nair was ennumerating some of the successes of Chandrayaan 1.

[Prakshepak]

Lunar Survey Spacecraft Develops an Attitude Problem
Pallava Bagla
India's first moon probe, Chandrayaan-1, has suffered a critical malfunction that jeopardizes the remainder of the mission. According to the Indian Space Research Organization, Chandrayaan-1 achieved all of its mission objectives before the malfunction was detected in May; some foreign scientists with instruments aboard Chandrayaan-1 concur that the probe performed well. But the spacecraft, which entered lunar orbit last November, can no longer orient itself with high precision.

From: Here!

[Phil Stooke]

A star sensor for attitude control:

http://www.ndtv.com/news/sci-tech/chandray...e_cut_short.php

Too bad, but they did accomplish a lot already. It will be good to see more results later in the year.

Phil

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Jul17_2009.htm

An official statement from ISRO, plus several new photos:

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/images...rayaan/ph01.jpg

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/images...rayaan/ph02.jpg

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/images...rayaan/ph03.jpg

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

An update:

Chandrayaan-1 successfully photographs the Solar eclipse from lunar orbit:

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/moon_images.htm

[John Moore]

Modified the first series of 8 images to show the shadow that little bit better.

John

[dilo]

Rough Eclipse animation, already posted on a less-proper thread:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=143953