Date:23/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/23/stories/2008112350090100.htm

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Chandrayaan: normal operations soon

A Correspondent

Only two more instruments to be made operational, says Madhavan Nair

G. Madhavan Nair says Chandrayaan-2 in 2012.

Nedumbassery: Almost all the major steps with regard to the course of Chandrayaan-1, the Indian moon mission, are complete and it will switch over to normal operation in a short while, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G. Madhavan Nair has said.

He told presspersons at the airport here on Saturday that only two more instruments aboard the craft had to be made operational and that might be done within a week.

“From there onwards, only some routine operations are left and everything is going according to the plans,” he said. The two science instruments of the U.S. aboard the spacecraft had become operational and they would start sending data within a week.

Mr. Nair said that with the terrain mapping camera of the Moon Impact Probe (MIP), stereoscopic pictures of the moon would be available, which, in turn, would help to have a better understanding of the height and shape of craters on the lunar surface.

“We are the only country to obtain pictures from such a closer distance. We have got pictures with a resolution of five metres followed by a Japanese probe which secured pictures only with a resolution of 10 metres,” he said.

On the ejection of the MIP from the space craft, he said the probe hit the lunar surface within 25 minutes and 10 seconds after leaving the mother craft and approached a crater named Shackleton. “During its fall from the lunar orbit, the instrument could take approach pictures of the crater,” he said.

Noting that the MIP was part of its technological demonstration, he said the previous missions around this region had not yielded the desired results.

Mr. Nair said the ISRO was planning to launch Chandrayaan-2 in 2012, a mission in which a robot would be sent to collect samples from the lunar surface and conduct tests. In 2015, it would conduct a spacewalk and the man mission to the Moon would be launched only after it. After completing the Chandrayaan series, the ISRO would be going in for a mission to Mars and the steps for it had started. A blueprint of this project was expected to be out only after four or five years, he added. He landed here at 11.40 a.m. on Saturday and was on his way to the Guruvayur temple.