The Hindu Business Line : 32-m antenna sets stage for Indian lunar mission

Bangalore, Nov. 29 With just over five months to go for the first Indian lunar odyssey, the Indian Space Research Organisation is putting the finishing touches to the ground station that includes the mission’s nerve centre, the Deep Space Network.

A 32-metre dish antenna built and erected indigenously is at the core of it.

The Rs 360-crore Chandrayaan-1 is slated for April 9, 2008.

The DSN, its Earth-bound eyes and ears, is being put in place to transmit commands to and from the spacecraft across a distance of four lakh km.

Fully indigenous

The network is located on 122 acres of basin land at Byalalu, 40 km from Bangalore.

Dozens of public and private sector companies were involved in the fully indigenous effort of putting together the Rs 100-crore DSN and its large antenna, according to Mr S.K. Shivakumar, Director, ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network.

The Bangalore-based ISTRAC will control the two-year lunar mission through the DSN.

This is the first time such work has been done inthe country, beginning from scratch in 2005 and in record three years, he told Business Line.

“The plan was that India should have its own deep space antenna. (With the exception of a few imported electronic parts), our hands are really wet with doing this job.”

The antenna that cost Rs 60 crore sits 30 metres from ground.

Its 180-panel reflector was pieced together petal by petal over 45 days and was in place by November 18. (As a precaution, ISRO installed an imported 18-m antenna nearby. Both will be used for the mission.)

The ground part includes the spacecraft control centre, space science data centre and international ground station augmentations.

All Chandrayaan systems will be tested between December and April next.

“We scouted for months to find suitable industrial partners,” Mr Shivakumar said.

Industry partners

For the DSN-32 project, ECIL fabricated the antenna reflector; L&T made the mount and installed the system. Bhabha Atomic Research Centre designed, developed and manufactured the sub-reflector control mechanism.

Godrej & Boyce made the beam waveguide mirrors designed and developed by ISTRAC and ISAC.

The Satish Dhawan Space Centre designed the base wheels. Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, HAL Bangalore and Nashik, SLN Technologies, CADES, Venkateswara Industries, Devi Metals and Jyothi Tools too were involved.

The DSN will cater to bigger missions on the drawing board: Chandrayaan-2 planned with Russia around 2010; a manned and a Mars mission around 2015.

For space agencies, cooperation is the key to saving cost, time and efforts.

“The DSN can track something else for other agencies, and there can be some return on the investment,” Mr Shivakumar said.