India Touches the Moon

by NANDKUMAR KAMAT
Posted on 2008-11-15
The future is bright for three big areas of Indian science and technology- Space research, Ocean research and Nuclear research. In each of this area steadily India has made noteworthy progress. A giant breakthrough would be achieved when India’s ocean technologists would begin tapping the huge reservoir of methane gas hydrates and exploit the polymetallic nodules from ocean floor on industrial scale.
In space research the success of Chandrayaan mission so far has been a landmark. What the spacecraft does in the lunar orbit is another matter. In lunar orbit many things could wrong as time passes. A burst of Solar flair can maim the spacecraft. A direct hit from a passing micrometeorite may disable its electronics. A stiff joint may cause some malfunction. There are hundreds of worst case scenarios when a man made machine orbits the moon and there are very few perfect machines. But the very placement of indigenously built spacecraft in lunar orbit is a big achievement. Anything could have happened. The spacecraft could have been lost or could have crashed on Moon. But ISRO overcame all such anxieties. It is a confirmation of India’s mathematical and computing prowess.
The Moon Impact probe (MIP) was a novel payload. According to ISRO-It was aimed to demonstrate the technologies required for landing a probe at the desired location on the moon and also to qualify some of the technologies related to future soft landing missions. This apart, scientific exploration of the moon at close distance was also intended using MIP. The 29 kg Moon Impact Probe carried a C-band Radar Altimeter for continuous measurement of altitude of the Probe above lunar surface. It also carried , a Video Imaging System for acquiring images of the surface of moon from the descending probe and a Mass Spectrometer for measuring the constituents of extremely thin lunar atmosphere during its 20 minute descent to the lunar surface. MIP was developed by Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre of Thiruvananthapuram.
By sending the tricolour with MIP, on the surface of the Moon the orbiting spacecraft Chandrayaan 1 would leave behind a permanent historic mark beyond earth. Chandrayaan 1 mission has successfully demonstrated that India’s Space industry has now become self confident and competitive. This is remarkable in a country where 30 per cent people are still illiterate. There were skeptics when ISRO had invested in a series of remote sensing satellites. Today this investment has paid vast dividends. India has now its own satellites with military spying capacity orbiting earth and keeping an eye over sensitive areas.
The Chandrayaan 1 mission has proven many things. First, the capacity to aim, plan and work as a team without time and cost overruns. Second, the simplification and adaptation of the complex mission logistics-which involved challenging telemetry and controls. Third to design most of the hardware and software indigenously. Fourth, stupendous success of the Indian rocket programme-the ability of PSLV to adapt to such missions as launch vehicle. Fifth, the ability to plan, design , fabricate and operationalize the indigenous deep space network-the 18 and 32 metres antennae near Bangalore. Sixth, integration of foreign payloads, diverse in their design, specifications and functions. Seventh, accomplishing this as cheaply as possible considering the costs of such missions in other space faring countries. Many new technologies would come out of this mission like the Terrain mapping camera carried by Chandrayaan 1- an indigenous design. It would be able to generate a real three dimensional topographic map of the Moon. A partial view is available from National Aeronautics Space Administration world wind MOON – a mosaic of thousands of archived images taken by different US missions. But these images were taken with old technology and are no match to what ISRO’s Terrain mapping camera would do. The two and half metre resolution would be sufficient to locate future landing sites for dropping remote controlled robotic rovers and possibly pinpoint regions in which India would be strategically interested in future.
Chandrayaan’s lunar cartography would also lead to identification and naming of several novel topographic features using Swadeshi names. But this secret agenda has not been revealed. Chandrayaan also carries dual purpose instruments. These do not distinguish between civilian and military uses. Both the NASA payloads have this capacity. The mini synthetic aperture radar can be used by military to discover enemies, bunkers and tunnels. The mineralogy mapper can detect strategic minerals on earth. By testing these technologies in lunar environment India has signalled that it has now joined USA as an equal partner in high tech research. We need to wait for a few weeks for the first good results from all the payloads. But I am sure that soon the media would flash beautiful pictures of lunar landscape-proclaiming to the world that India has finally arrived as a space faring nation.