The Hindu Business Line : In quest of minerals, energy, water on Moon

Bangalore, Oct. 21 At the crack of dawn on Wednesday, India sets out for the Moon on the Chandrayaan-1 probe, taking its first baby step into exploring outer space.

Barring a lightning storm at the eastern coastal town of Sriharikota, which is ISRO’s spacepad, a special 1,300-kg spacecraft is slated to lift off on a two-week journey to the Moon, four lakh km away.

The national space agency ISRO has planned the spacecraft to circle the Moon and send the images over the next two years pole to pole from a distance of 100 km.

Sixth country

When it reaches the Moon, India will be only the sixth country to get so close to the nearest celestial neighbour after Russia and the UK in 1959, Japan in 1993, Europe in 2003 and China in 2007. It will be the first to continuously image the unseen far side of Moon – which has only one side turned towards us always.

ISRO scientists at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre will loft the lunar craft into space on a slightly rejigged launch vehicle, the PSLV-C11.

From then on, scientists tracking it from the Spacecraft Control Centre in Bangalore will gradually manoeuvre it into the planned orbit near Moon by November 8-10 after it loops the Earth twice. Indian satellites have travelled just 36,000 km from Earth and the lunar loft will be 11 times that challenge.

COMMERCIAL PURSUIT

The Rs 386-crore Chandrayaan-1 is all about mapping the lunar surface, locating minerals such as titanium, aluminium, calcium, thorium, radium and uranium that may be harvested some remote day and brought back to Earth; to look for water that may sustain human beings who may camp there some later day en route to journeys far beyond. It is also to search for helium 3 that, scientists say, is abundant there and can support nuclear fusion programmes back home and quench the energy thirst of the world.

Chandrayaan-1, for one, is expected to provide the first high-resolution 3D atlas of lunar surface, point out where its minerals are deposited; and endorse some of the earlier queries on lunar origin and its support to any life.

11 PAYLOADS

Along with five of ISRO’s scientific instruments and six payloads by NASA, European Space Agency and Bulgaria on invitation, the space agency has included a Moon Impact Probe (MIP) that will crash land on the Moon the same day, but not before sending close-up images of the lunar surface.

TRICOLOUR FLIES

MIP, during its 20-25-minute descent, will release the Indian flag to mark her reaching the Moon, Mr M. Annadurai, Project Director of Chandrayaan-1, had said earlier.

Said to have cost far less than other lunar probes, the Chandrayaan-1 budget includes Rs 100 crore towards setting up the tracking and control system or the Deep Space Network; Rs 100 crore for the PSLV rocket; Rs 83 crore for the spacecraft bus, Rs 53 crore for payloads; and Rs 50 crore for the scientific data centre, external network support and programme management expenses.

The idea of reaching for the Moon was first mooted in 1999 at the Indian Academy of Sciences and followed up by the Astronautical Society of India in 2000.

The National Lunar Mission Task Force set up by ISRO endorsed it and gave the outline of the project.

BEYOND MOON

ISRO is already looking beyond Chandrayaan-1. The second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, has been approved for 2011-12. The Rs 425-crore joint probe with Russia will include a lunar lander.

ISRO is also talking of putting an Indian in space by 2015, and a Mars mission by 2013. For these missions, it is planning to build a third, larger and improved launchpad at Sriharikota.

In the last 50 years, 67 other lunar probes have been sent, including three Apollo human landing missions. They have returned with several hundred kg of lunar rock and soil samples. ISRO scientists say Chandrayaan-1 will not be a ‘me-too’ but may answer some of the still lingering questions.

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