Chandrayaan is the first Indian Mission to the Moon devoted to high-resolution remote sensing of the lunar surface features in visible, near infrared, x-ray and low energy gamma ray regions. India’s first unmanned flight to the moon blasted off from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh on 22 October, 2008. These missions have expected life of about two years.
However, the missions have following objectives. Such as:
Carrying out high resolution mapping of topographic features in 3D, distribution of various minerals and elemental chemical species including radioactive materials covering the entire lunar surface using a set of remote sensing payloads. The new set of data would also open the mystery about the origin and evolution of solar system in general and moon in particular.
The plan of the mission is also to harnessing the science payloads, lunar craft and the launch vehicle with suitable ground support system The mission has special focus on integrating, testing, launching and achieving lunar orbit of 100 km, in orbit operation of experiments, communication, telecomm and, telemetry data reception, quick look data and archival for scientific utilization by group of scientists.
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But specific areas of the study related to this mission are:
i. High resolution mineralogical and chemical imaging of the permanently shadowed north and south polar regions.
ii. Search for surface or sub-surface water-ice on the moon, especially at the lunar pole.
iii. Identification of chemical of lunar rocks.
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iv. To map the height variation of the lunar surface.
ISRO has planned to launch the mission Chandrayaan-II in 2011-12 after the success of Chandrayacin-I mission, “The Chandrayaan-II will basically be an Indian project but ISRO has also said it would consider participation by other countries on a case by case if they would show interest.
With the success of Mission Chandrayaan-I, India has joined the club elite nations, The United
States, Russia, Japan and China, who have scientific designs on the Earth’s natural satellite in the future. The 3.8 billion missions became operational within three months in the life span of two years. However, this mission also have foreign payloads from the US, European Space Agency and Germany.
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While Chandrayaan is only a remote sensing craft, its second version called Chandrayaan II hopes to land a wheeled motorise rover on the lunar surface. This is expected to pick up soil samples for in situ analysis before sending the data to the obiting mothership which would then transmit it to the earth.