Japan's just released some pics of a crater...this below is a quote from the USF Forum Mod Phil Stookes..(he's done some excellent topographic analysis on some releases in that forum, for those interested..it's worth a look)
Some incredible new images from Kaguya on its website:
his is at 58 north, 161 east. The big subdued crater that fills most of the large image is called Yamamoto. The data are supposed to be opened to public access 12 months after the end of the primary mission, i.e. this November. The Terrain camera ia an amazing instrument, and it has given nearly global coverage, as I understand it
Chennai: After the successful completion of all the major mission objectives, the orbit of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, which was at a height of 100 km from the lunar surface since November 2008, has now been raised to 200 km.
The Raise in orbit will give some relief from the heat to chandrayaan-1
Why is the Chandrayan thread in the MILITARY forum? ISRO is clearly separated out from the Indian Military/DRDO etc., and it is a CIVILIAN program. Putting this in the MILITARY forum is a shameless genuflection to those anti-India people who keep insist that the purpose of Indian space launchers, satellites is all to attack other nations. It is a disgrace that this is done on a site which claims to be about articulating the Indian point of view.
By the same token, the Indian Moon Mission is not a "STRATEGIC" one either. "Strategic Space" immediately conjures up images of ICBMS and STAR WARS type things, or about putting weapons on the Moon. Chandrayan is a historic reconnection with India's glorious past where the Devas and Asuras routinely took weekend trips to the 14 Universes etc. in their fine top-heavy elephant chariots.
However it is not entirely an ECONOMICs /COMMERCIAL program either. The Indian Moon Mission is about advancing human knowledge, bringing education to people, bringing infrastructure such as communications, providing navigation support, and a very large and traditional strength is in Earth Resource Sensing, which is immensely valuable to such things as seeing where the River Saraswati flowed, where Shri Ram's Vanara Sena built the Sethu causeway, where the temples of Mahabalipuram and Dwaraka lie submerged. Remote sensing is also about seeing tectonic faults, glacier changes, crop yields and mineral deposits using ground-penetrating radar.
Chandrayan is also about national pride, NOT based on military muscle-flexing. It threatens no nation. Chandrayaan committed the Ultimate Sacrifice totally in Peace for all Humankind.
For these reasons, the Indian Moon Mission is obviously a General Discussion topic, and hence I propose to move it to the GD forum. If anyone has strong objections, I am going to be generous and reasonable unlike the people who arbitrarily jerk active threads around, and allow people to make coherent, clear, well-reasoned arguments why they want to continue this abomination of placing the Indian Space discussion in a MILITARY forum.
Four decades after humankind’s first giant
leap, NASA is returning to the Moon in a
big way with the Mini-RF project, which
is flying two radar instruments to map
the lunar poles, search for water ice, and
to demonstrate new communications
technologies.
An innovative synthetic aperture radar
(SAR), the instrument will orbit the Moon on
two platforms: the Indian Space Research
Organisation’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft
and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
What it finds will support humans’ return to
the Moon.
Mini-RF is looking for possible ice deposits
inside the permanently shadowed impact
craters near both lunar poles.
During Mini-RF’s first imaging season aboard
Chandrayaan-1, from February to April 2009,
the instrument collected several strips of
data each day of both poles, producing
more than 600 total data strips. These strips
have been combined to form mosaics (other
side) that cover the region within 10° latitude
of both poles. During the second imaging
season, which begins in summer 2009, the
mission team will use Mini-RF to fill in any
coverage gaps and look at other non-polar
areas of scientific interest
In this photo provided by NASA, an Atlas V rocket blasts off the launch pad headed to the moon, carrying a pair of science probes that will scout out potential landing spots for astronauts, Thursday afternoon, June 18, 2009 in Cape Canaveral, Fla. One probe will orbit the moon and provide a 3-D relief map of the lunar surface. The other satellite will drop its spent upper-stage rocket into a shadowed crater at the moon's south pole. This satellite will measure the matter that's kicked up, send the data to Earth, then also crash into the surface. The goal is to determine if frozen water is present.
(AP Photo/NASA, Bill Ingalls)
have patched two sensors in order to steer the vehicle. The spacecraft is working properly now, say ISRO sources, adding that while data collection and experiments will take place without a glitch, its two-year life span might have to be shortened............India's first unmanned moon spacecraft was supposed to start relaying data by September.
what do they mean by :
"spacecraft was supposed to start relaying data by September" ?
what has it been doing till now?
Link
A very informative interview with Madhavan Nair (thermal-runaway issues and the star sensor failure) on the workarounds devised by ISRO to compensate for them.
The payload that will suffer most is India's Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument, designed to measure altitude variations within a 5-meter accuracy. It was designed to operate at a 100-km orbit; at 200 km, the return signal may be too weak, says a mission specialist. Also unclear is whether projects tied to x-ray and near-infrared spectrometers will be completed, says Christian Erd of the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, Netherlands.
BANGALORE: Even as the failure of Chandrayaan’s ‘star sensor’ continues to make news, top officials at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have revealed that the April 26 snag announced on Friday was the second sensor failure — the first one having occurred “much earlier.”
The lunar spacecraft had on board two star sensors, with one as back-up, to determine the orientation or “attitude” while in orbit. Although the ISRO maintained that the “spacecraft started malfunctioning on April 26,” necessitating a switch-over to a contingency gyroscope, it appears that the malfunction had taken place earlier.
...
With the failure of the two star sensors, the number of technical glitches Chandrayaan has encountered in its eight-month lunar orbit stand at three — the third being the failure of a Bus Management Unit, which has been replaced by a back-up unit.
...
On one instance in January, the temperature within the spacecraft had risen to 80 degrees Celsius, according to another ISRO official. The optimal temperature for electronic packages and payloads is zero to 40 degrees.
I beleive ISRO crammed in too many instruments in the small craft. But everything has a learning curve, this mission has given valueble experience as it is.
India's first lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 captured the shadow of the moon on the earth's surface during the July 22 total solar eclipse, an Indian space agency official said on Tuesday.
LRO, Chandrayaan-1 Team Up For Unique Search for Water Ice
Written by Nancy Atkinson
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and India's Chandrayaan-1 will team up on August 20 to perform a Bi-Static radar experiment to search for water ice in a crater on the Moon's north pole. Both spacecraft will be in close proximity approximately 200 km above the lunar surface, and both are equipped with radar instruments. The two instruments will look at the same location from different angles, with Chandrayaan-1's radar transmitting a signal which will be reflected off the interior of Erlanger crater, and then be picked up by LRO. Scientists will compare the signal that bounces straight back to Chandrayaan with the signal that bounces at a slight angle to LRO to garner unique information, particularly about any water ice that may be present inside the crater. ……………
LRO, Chandrayaan-1 Team Up For Unique Search for Water Ice
Written by Nancy Atkinson
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and India's Chandrayaan-1 will team up on August 20 to perform a Bi-Static radar experiment to search for water ice in a crater on the Moon's north pole. Both spacecraft will be in close proximity approximately 200 km above the lunar surface, and both are equipped with radar instruments. The two instruments will look at the same location from different angles, with Chandrayaan-1's radar transmitting a signal which will be reflected off the interior of Erlanger crater, and then be picked up by LRO. Scientists will compare the signal that bounces straight back to Chandrayaan with the signal that bounces at a slight angle to LRO to garner unique information, particularly about any water ice that may be present inside the crater. ……………
"It will be about as good as you can get from remote sensing," Nozette said after the experiment concluded. "This is the most definitive experiment you can try to do without landing and drilling down."
Controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center commanded a short burn on LRO Aug. 17 to bring it into position to cross over the crater at almost the same time as the Indian spacecraft. Both were in 200-kilometer orbits, moving at about 1.6 kilometers (3,580 mph) per second as they focused on an area 18 kilometers across with an angular separation of about 2.5 degrees.
To receive the data, mission managers in the U.S. and India had to coordinate the configurations of ground antennas managed by NASA's Deep Space Network, the Johns-Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and ISRO.
"We did it, and it was pretty hard to do," Nozette said. His colleague at the USRA institute, Paul Spudis, is principal investigator for the Mini-SAR instrument on Chandrayaan-1.
Both spacecraft were sending good data from the pass back to Earth late Aug. 20, but processing it will be "fairly complex" and "may take weeks" to complete, Nozette said. Final results will be published as peer-reviewed scientific papers, he said.
harbans, thanks! for the informative link.
Definitely looks like a successful experiment, and no problems pointing the CY instruments, star sensor or no star sensor.
BANGALORE: Radio contact with India's first lunarcraft Chandrayaan-1 was abruptly lost early on Saturday, the Indian space agency said.
"The contact was lost at 01.30 IST as the deep space network (DSN) at Byalalu, about 40 km from Bangalore, received the data from the lunarcraft during the previous orbit up to 00.25 IST," according to an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) statement here.
NDTV Correspondent, Saturday August 29, 2009, New Delhi
India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft is lost in space. ISRO has confirmed that radio contact with Chandrayaan-1 was lost at 1.30 am. The Health of Chandrayaan-I subsystems is being analysed, according to ISRO. It was launched in Sriharikota in October, 2008.
Experts say the mission has completed its objective: to reach the moon and place India's flag on the moon. India is the fourth country to accomplish that. Chandrayaan has delivered lots of crucial space data to India. It has also been studying whether there's water on the moon.
NDTV's Science Editor, Pallava Bagla, says "Chandrayaan shold not be written off. ISRO may manage to recover contact with it. But earlier this year, it faced over-heating and other technical problems. Yes, Chandrayaan is on its last legs, but it has met its objective".
The spacecraft has completed 312 days in orbit, making more than 3400 orbits around the Moon. India has spent close to Rs 400 crore on the Chandryaan mission.
I am hoping against hope that it may be recovered soon, especially after the star sensor failure there was little chance that CY-1 would last the full 2 years...
Hopefully, major lessons will be learned from Chandrayaan-1 that will be incorporated into Chandrayaan-2. Next time they will hopefully plan better for things like overheating and temperature extremes, etc. Why not even have a "blackbox" transponder that would be released if the craft were to disabled/destroyed somehow? It might at least enable some kind of post-mortem investigation.
You know, in the software industry, there is a QA group separate from the design/development groups. The function of the QA group is to break the software, or make it not work. They have a different loyalty and goal than the people who made the product. Likewise, for space missions that cost large sums of money to get off the ground and into space, there needs to be some kind of solid stress-testing with the goal of making the system fail, in order to achieve the most robust design possible. Otherwise, what is the use of spending such large sums of money, only to watch helplessly as the system fails out in space?
I was really surprised when I saw that NASA's Mars Polar Lander was having trouble with the basic task of getting soil into its ovens, because the gratings wouldn't let the soil in. It looked as if some egghead lab-boys had designed some unwieldy setup that even an ordinary person from the agro industry wouldn't do.
Agencies like ISRO need to bring in industrial culture into their organizations, to ensure that the product not only works, but is over-designed to deal with unexpectedly adverse conditions. Look at the great benefits yielded from NASA's Mars rovers, because they outlasted their mission life.
sad to see chandrayaan one lose contact.
but i am sure the lessons learnt will ensure that the next iteration will perform better.
nothing is perfect, but every step will take us higher!
I suppose CY-1 accomplished most of what it set out to accomplish , the MIP is still on the lunar surface and 90% mission objectives have been completed. I'm certain the bright minds at ISRO will make significant improvements to CY-2 andthis long remembered first step in outer space will teach us a lot more.
Future is bright. Next step is ISRO learning to:-
1. build satellite with longer duration orbit.
2. launch rover onto lunar surface and all the complex engg. reqd for launching.
3. master continous communication channel with russian rover from orbit.
Is it not too early to give up hope? Sometimes electronics recover all by themselves...
Any info on what died...Radio? The craft must be having a back up xmitter(?) or is it the 2nd bus management unit....hope ISRO will publish the findings.
Though this was a very fine effort for a first deep space/lunar mission,,,no need to gloss over the premature end,,,,
Hope we got enough engineering data ( in addition to the great science data) to enable a thorough postmortem, root cause analysis and inputs going into CY2 mission.
isro chief tells ndtv that hopes of reestablishing contact still exist with chandrayaan-1. also reports say that they know the "symptoms" not the "actual problem".
Even the recently launched LRO suffered an anomaly last week causing substantial loss of on-board fuel. The problem was similar to Chandrayaan-1 ie an instrument called the IRU on it's attitude control system (ACS), used to determine the orientation and trajectory of the spacecraft suffered an anomaly. The anomaly caused the spacecraft ACS to switch to the Star Tracker Assembly for spacecraft positional information and caused the spacecraft's thruster to fire excessively, consuming a substantial amount of fuel.
The Chandrayaan-1 mission was launched with a budget of $86 mn, almost half the cost of China's Chang'e 1 mission ($187 mn) and just about a fifth of Japan's Kayuga ($480 mn).
Last edited by Vinay_D on 29 Aug 2009 20:53, edited 1 time in total.
The data was collected for about four minutes. Mini-SAR of Chandrayaan-1 was fine tuned for making observations in terms of pulse width, range rate sampling as well as its 200 km orbit height, it said adding ''the operations went on as planned.'' All Chandrayaan-1 operations related to Bi-Static experiment were executed from Spacecraft Control Centre (SCC) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), Peenya.
.....no disappointment for me. 
Any news snipets 
