Other 2008 Events - India

On October 22nd of this year the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched its first probe to our Moon - the Chandrayaan-1. This 2,875-pound spacecraft is scheduled to spend up to two years mapping lunar terrain and studying the satellite's minerals from an orbit about 62 miles high. The probe carries 5 scientific payloads from Indian institutions and another 6 from other countries, including the United States.

This artist's concept shows the Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan 1. Credit: ISRO

NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper is aboard the Chandrayaan-1. This device, called the M3, is a 15-pound imaging spectrometer from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The M3 will map the moon's mineral resources (including water at the poles) through high resolution visible and near-infrared wavelengths. NASA officials will then use these maps to plan future Moon mission landing sites.

Other instruments include:

• C1XS - an Europen Space Agency (ESA)-funded payload jointly developed by the U.K. lab, the University of Helsinki and ISRO. C1XS will survey the chemical compounds on the moon by detecting the X-ray signature of surface elements.
• RADOM - a Bulgarian radiation detector.
• SIR 2 - a German near-infrared spectrometer. Financed by ESA, this device will provide information similar to the M3 but on a much narrower spectral band.
• MiniSAR - a U.S. payload from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, specifically planned to accompany M3 to look for signs of water ice near the Moon's poles.
• SARA - an ESA-funded probe, which includes component parts from Sweden, Switzerland, Japan and India. The probe will monitor solar wind particles impacting the lunar surface.

One of India's own devices is a 64-pound impactor to be dropped from the orbiting spacecraft for a nosedive into the moon. Hopefully, this crash landing will also provide valuable data on the Moon's composition.

So, the race is on and luckily the United States is part of this Indian mission so it can plan for it own return to the Moon. And India joins a small club of countries that have been to the Moon - the U.S., Russia, ESA, Japan and China. Rumors are that India plans to put a rover on the moon in 2011 and possibly follow this with a manned mission.