After registering the historical mark in the Indian Space science history with the launch of 10 satellites in a single go through, the scientist of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is now looking for the moon mission. An unmanned moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, is scheduled in the third quarter of this year.
For this, ISRO has developed required technologies and instrument that are under testing mode as per ISRO Chairman G Madhvan Nair told media after successfully launching 10 satellites using Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV–C9, technique from Sriharikota on Monday.
Speaking to reporters, Madhvan told that ISRO scientists would launch a 500 kg satellite under its ‘Chandrayaan-1’ mission that would be orbit Earth’s only natural satellite for a life span of two years.
“The PSLV will be powered with 3 tonnes of extra fuel to cover the distance of the Moon and in its two-year life span, the satellite will orbit the moon first at 1,000 km distance, later descend to 100 km from the surface to survey the lunar surface to produce a complete map of its chemical characteristics and 3-dimensional topography,” explained Nair.
Further briefing about the manned mission, Nair said that it would be too early to go for manned-mission; we are waiting for government’s nod. However he also added that it would take seven more years to complete.
‘The three unmanned flights would be send using the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) MK-III configuration after the manned mission to evaluate the success and efficiency of the mission,’ as he said.
"We will be able to put two persons on a lower earth orbit. We have submitted our project proposal to the government and the Centre has already released Rs 95 crore for the project. We are awaiting the approval for the project in another six months.” said ISRO chairman.
Earlier on April 28, the ISRO staff and its associates have projected a pack of 10 satellites with a cumulative weight of 824 kg in one go through. All the satellites have reached on the destination point without any slightly deviation in 20 minutes.
Out of 10, one was major, one was mini and remaining eight were nano satellites. The major 690 kg Cartosat-2A was a remote sensing satellite equipped with the best-ever Indian imagery resolution that offers 0.8 metre imaginary and would be used for large-scale mapping.
This would be complimentary to the already existing Cartosat-2 satellite in the orbit that is beaming 1-m imageries since January 2007 with a life span of 5 years, informed Nair.
While the 83 kg mini satellite, IMS-1 or the Indian Mini Satellite –1 that was earlier known as the Third World Satellite (TWSAT) has been integrated with many new technologies and miniaturized sub-systems. Besides, having equipped with multi-spectral camera (Mx), it is incorporated with a hyper-spectral camera (HySI) functioning in the visible and near infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Both the major Cartostat-2A and mini IMS-1 are Indian satellites while rest 8 nano satellites were foreign belonging to several universities: Canada, Germany, Denmark, Japan and Netherlands.
The six out of eight satellites were clustered together which were named collectively NLS-4 while the rest of two were NLS –5 and RUBIN-8. The total weight of nano satellite was 50 kg.
The NS-4, a pack of six satellite have been developed by the university of Toronto, Canada in which two of them, CUTE 1.7 and SEEDS were built in Japan while remaining other four, CAN-X2, AAUSAT-II, COMPASS-1 and DELPHI-C3 were built in Canada, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands respectively.
Among the rest two-nano satellite, NLS-5 was developed by the University of Toronto, while RUBIN-8 belongs to Cosmos International, Germany.
Except two Indian satellites, ISRO has charged for all foreign satellite for placing them into the orbit. The commercial wing of ISRO, Antrix Corporation, has charged for projecting them.
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