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Chandrayaan-I may have met a premature death, but its mission remains more or less accomplished . The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) has said that the termination of Chandrayaan-1 last week after losing radio contact with earth will not impact the retrieval of scientific data it has carried out in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).
“The spacecraft has met 90-95 % of its scientific objectives,” Isro chairman G Madhavan Nair said. Chandrayaan’s high-resolution cameras have relayed over 70,000 digital images of the lunar surface including pictures of mountains and craters and the permanently shadowed area of the moon’s polar region.
Isro’s programme director for remote sensing satellites M Krishnaswamy said, “Foreign partners are happy with the mission” .
“All the data was downloaded from the spacecraft on a regular basis and no scientific data was lost” , public affairs officer (space operations), Nasa headquarters, John Yembrick, said. “Nasa has obtained an abundance of data during our operations. Work is on to analyse that information,” he said.
Isro said scientists from Nasa, European Space Agency
(ESA), and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences with their Indian counterparts will have a close-door review meeting on Monday. They will discuss the performance of their payloads (scientific instruments) that were onboard Chandrayaan-1 .
Nasa and Isro had recently joined hands to conduct a novel experiment to study the existence of ice in a permanently shadowed crater near the north pole of the moon using Isro’s Chandrayaan-1 and Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft orbiting the moon.
Both the spacecraft were equipped with Nasa Miniature Radio Frequency (RF) instruments that function as a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). The radars on both the craft was used to zoom in on to the Erlanger Crater on the North pole. Incidentally , the Shackleton crater located on the moon’s south pole is believed to contain ice deposits.
One of the key objectives of the moon mission, as part of its 4 lakh-km voyage was to identify deposits of the mineral helium-3 . This non-radioactive mineral, believed to be abundant on the moon, is regarded to have the potential to power future nuclear fusion reactors for hundreds of years.
One Chandrayaan-1 moon mission payload has enabled scientists to study the interaction between the solar wind and a planetary body like the moon without a magnetic field. The payload was a joint one of Sweden and India — Sub KeV Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA) which covered the entire lunar surface several times, ISRO said in a statement at the end of a meeting of payload scientists from India and abroad connected with the Chandrayaan-1 mission.
Scientists from ISRO, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), USA, and European Space Agency (ESA) met here yesterday and today and reviewed the data sets obtained from the 11 payloads (scientific instruments) on board the lunar craft.
The scientists discussed results obtained from that data, some of which are being reviewed by a peer review committee. ISRO said the 11 payloads have largely met their objectives of studying the moon from different perspectives.
Among those, four instruments — Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC), Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), Hyperspectral Imager (HySI) and Smart near Infrared Spectrometer (SIR-2) — have provided extensive data on moon’s topography, mineralogy and chemistry.
“TMC and HySI payloads of ISRO have covered about 70 per cent of the lunar surface, while M3 covered more than 95 per cent of the same and SIR-2 has provided high-resolution spectral data on the mineralogy of the moon”, ISRO said.
Indian Space Research Organisation said interesting data on lunar polar areas was provided by Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI) and High Energy X-ray Spectrometer (HEX) of ISRO as well as Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) of the USA.
LLRI covered both the lunar poles and additional lunar regions of interest, HEX made about 200 orbits over the lunar poles and Mini-SAR provided complete coverage of both North and South Polar Regions of the moon.
Another ESA payload — Chandrayaan-1 imaging X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) — detected more than two dozen weak solar flares during the mission duration. The Bulgarian payload called Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM) was activated on the day of the launch itself and worked till the mission’s end.
ISRO said scientists from India and participating agencies expressed satisfaction on the excellent performance of Chandrayaan-1 mission as well as the high quality of data sent by the spacecraft.
They have started formulating science plans based on the data sets obtained from the mission. It is expected that in the next few months, interesting results about lunar topography, mineral and chemical contents of the moon and related aspects are expected to be published, ISRO said.
Posted by: Soderman/NLSI Staff
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ET-Cetera/No-data-lost-from-Chandrayaan-NASA/articleshow/4984787.cms
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ET-Cetera/Interaction-without-magnetic-field-ISRO/articleshow/4987445.cms
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Author/Curator: Greg Schmidt NASA Official: David Morrison Last Updated: November 24, 2009 + Contact NASA + Site Map |
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