Advertisement

Help
You are here: Rediff Home » India » News » Photos
Search:  Rediff.com The Web

  Email  |    Discuss   |   Get latest news on your desktop

Back | Next

All about India's moon mission

October 17, 2008

  • What are the basic components of the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft?

    The basic components of the chandrayaan-1 spacecraft are:

    • The scientific payloads: the instruments that will gather science data.

    • The solar array that provides power to the spacecraft. Chandrayaan also carries a battery that stores the power generated by the solar array and feeds it to other systems.
    • The thrusters perform fuel burns to change the spacecraft's trajectory and attitude.
    • The various functional requirements of the spacecraft such as Attitude and Orbit Control, Command processing, House keeping telemetry, Sensor data processing, Thermal management, payload data handling operation, duel gimbaled data transmission antenna pointing, onboard mission management etc would be taken care by the Bus Management Unit (BMU).
    • The spacecraft also carries two star sensors and inertial reference unit based on miniaturized gyros providing absolute attitude.
  • What are the scientific instruments onboard Chandrayaan-1?
    There are altogether eleven scientific instruments onboard Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Five of them are Indian and other six are from European Space Agency (3), NASA (2) and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1) selected through ISRO Announcement of Opportunity (AO). Two of the ESA instruments have Indian collaboration.
  • Image: The 44-metre (145-foot) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C6) will escort the Chandrayaan to space.
    Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images

    Back | Next

    © 2008 Rediff.com India Limited. All Rights Reserved.Disclaimer | Feedback