The Hindu Business Line : As ISRO’s lunar date nears, tracking systems are in full gear

Bangalore, Oct. 16 When Chandrayaan-1, the nation’s most ambitious and biggest space adventure to date, takes off on its lunar odyssey at the crack of dawn on October 22, two giant antennae at Bangalore will start tracking it 17 minutes into the launch.

These tracking systems, which are the eyes, ears, brain and guide of the lunar mission, are ready for the long haul, according to Mr S.K. Shivakumar, Director, ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network.

Starting from just after the launch to the next two years of the mission, ISTRAC and its Indian Deep Space Network with the 32-metre and 18-m antennae will play the key role in all manoeuvres, navigation, control, command. This includes catching or sending signals to the spacecraft across nearly 4 lakh km and the release of the Moon Impact Probe, painted in the Tricolour and that will crash land on the lunar surface.

“We did the first full dress rehearsal yesterday [on Tuesday] involving all the nine ground centres and it went off quite well. We will do two more until the 19th,” Mr Shivakumar told Business Line.

The biggest morale-booster, according to him, has been that the two antennae have tracked the Japanese lunar orbiter Selene or Kaguya, in co-operation with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. JAXA sent up its orbiter last year.

Selene being similar to Chandrayaan-1, tracking it for practice means “Our antenna pointing is perfect, the ground system works; and we are there when Chandrayaan-1 reaches Moon’s orbit,” he said.

ISRO has set up the Rs 100-crore ISDN which includes the special 32-metre antenna (named DSN32) to track the lunar mission and future planetary forays; the DSN18 stands by at the ISDN site at Byalalu, some 30 km on the outskirts of the city.

ISTRAC’s scientists also track the IRS remote-sensing satellites that orbit at a relatively small distance of 900 km. Over 200 scientists have been specially working round-the-clock with only Moon on their mind and hands. “There is heightened enthusiasm as this is a major mission. Every one has been put on the job, their command tasks assigned and logistics worked out. From now on, we’ll get even more focussed,” Mr Shivakumar said.

52-HOUR COUNTDOWN

The countdown at Sriharikota’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre will start 52 hours before the launch, or 2 a.m. on October 20, said Mr S. Satish, ISRO’s spokesman and Director, PR. The spacecraft and the specially jigged PSLV launch vehicle completed all mandatory tests over the past few days. The spacecraft is slated to be put into the launch vehicle on Friday.

The Rs 386-crore mission has been some three years in the making; 1,000 scientists from all ISRO centres have been on the job for two months and working round-the-clock for the last few weeks, Mr Satish said.

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