SFS News: Chandrayaan-1 successfully launched...

Chandrayaan-1, India’s first mission to the Moon, was successfully launched earlier this morning from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SHAR) in Sriharikota, India.
The PSLV-C11 rocket, an upgraded version of the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO’s) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, lifted off at 02:52 Central European Summer Time (CEST) and, about 20 minutes later, injected the spacecraft into a highly elongated orbit around the Earth.
This marked the beginning of Chandrayaan-1’s journey to the Moon, which will culminate with a major manoeuvre – the lunar orbit insertion – in about two weeks. Once the spacecraft is orbiting the Moon, further manoeuvres will progressively lower its altitude to the final 100 km-high circular orbit.


Artist's view of Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe

At the earliest opportunity, the spacecraft will eject the ‘Moon Impact Probe’ to provide information about the lunar surface. The mission will then continue from orbit, with remote-sensing studies carried out by its 11 scientific instruments. Three of these instruments were provided by Europe (UK, Germany, Sweden) through ESA.


Chandrayaan-1 mission profile

A new step in India-Europe collaboration
India and Europe began collaborating on space ventures when, in 1978, the first cooperation agreement between ESA and ISRO was signed. In 1981, an Ariane 1 launcher carried India’s first geostationary satellite, Apple. So far, 13 of India’s INSAT satellites have flown on Europe’s Arianes.

Chandrayaan-1, ISRO’s first mission beyond Earth orbit, marks the beginning of a new era of collaboration between ESA and India in space science.
ESA is making the expertise gained thanks to its SMART-1 lunar mission (2003–2006) available for this collaboration. Apart from coordinating and supporting the provision of the three European instruments (C1XS, SIR-2 and SARA, versions of the first two of which flew on SMART-1), ESA assisted in areas such as flight dynamics and is supporting data archiving and processing. As a result of the collaboration, ESA and ISRO will share the data from their respective instruments.


[i]“We congratulate ISRO on the successful launch this morning and we are eagerly looking forward to science to begin.â€

Bon Voyage!