India's Moon Exploration Program

[Indx TechStyle]

Though I already know about existing separate thread for Chandrayaan 2, I would like to start this one to cover entire progran, from ISRO to Team Indus or any possibly any private Lunar venture from India in future.
As ISRO chief has already announced Chandraan 2 & 3, I.don't think it would make sense for us in upcoming decades to cover them up with a thread in every turn. Possibly, any of these could be a sample return mission and probably even nuclear powered. ISRO wanted to send Cdy-2 as nuclear powered but ruled nuclear power out because of timelines. India earlier has tried to send return mission to Moon alongwith JPL Corporation of American, mission abandoned by US government.

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Under the Google Lunar XPrize, Team Indus has been selected as one of 29 teams from 17 countries in race of landing a rover. Team Indus has already tested it's landing system in January, 2015. The mission is consisted of two rovers weighing 15 kg in total.
Mission seems to scheduled for 2017 on a PSLV Rocket.
From the Official Website of Team Indus:

Our spacecraft will be housed inside the nosecone of a ISRO’s PSLV and to be launched from Sriharikota in late 2017.

The PSLV, in just 12 minutes from launch, will take the spacecraft to an orbit of 880 km x 70,000 km around the earth.

After going two and half times around the earth, raising our apogee by 10,000 km each time by firing the thrusters on our spacecraft, a manoeuvre called trans lunar injection - TLI - that will help the spacecraft escape the earth’s gravity will set it in the direction of the moon.

The spacecraft will reach its peak speed of 10.3 km/second and will take seven and half days to reach a distance of 100 km from the Moon. It will then decelerate to be for what we call the lunar orbit capture - a complicated manoeuvre which would result in the spacecraft being caught by the Moon’s gravity.

The thrusters are then fired to decelerate while orbiting around the moon getting closer to the lunar surface every time.

Landing is completely autonomous, and will be controlled by software on board the spacecraft which would use data collected from laser sensors to guide the spacecraft as it decelerates and descents.

The landing site is Mare Imbrium, latin for Sea of Showers, a vast dusty area on the Moon. The spacecraft will be scheduled to land just at the break of the lunar dawn, to help make the most of the lunar day.
Once we land, we will first connect back to earth with the help of our pan tilt mechanism, deploy the rover, and beam back high definition lunar images.

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Everything official about Chandryaan 1 (the Indian probe which discovered water on Moon):
Oct 22, 2008

Chandrayaan-1
Chandrayaan-1, India's first mission to Moon, was launched successfully on October 22, 2008 from SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota. The spacecraft was orbiting around the Moon at a height of 100 km from the lunar surface for chemical, mineralogical and photo-geologic mapping of the Moon. The spacecraft carried 11 scientific instruments built in India, USA, UK, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria.​

After the successful completion of all the major mission objectives, the orbit has been raised to 200 km during May 2009. The satellite made more than 3400 orbits around the moon and the mission was concluded when the communication with the spacecraft was lost on August 29, 2009.

More...

Mission Remote Sensing, Planetary Science
Weight 1380 kg (Mass at lift off)
Onboard power 700 Watts
Stabilization 3 - axis stabilised using reaction wheel and attitude control thrusters, sun sensors, star sensors, fibre optic gyros and accelerometers for attitude determination.
Payloads
Scientific Payloads from India

a) Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC)
b) Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI)
c) Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI)
d) High Energy X - ray Spectrometer (HEX)
e) Moon Impact Probe(MIP)
Scientific Payloads from abroad

f) Chandrayaan-I X-ray Spectrometer (CIXS)
g) Near Infrared Spectrometer (SIR - 2)
h) Sub keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer (SARA)
i) Miniature Synthetic Aperature Radar (Mini SAR)
j) Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3)
k) Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM)
Launch Date 22 October 2008
Launch Site SDSC, SHAR, Sriharikota
Launch Vehicle PSLV - C11
Orbit 100 km x 100 km : Lunar Orbit
Mission life 2 years


Launch Mass:
1380 kg
Mission Life:
2 years
Power:
700 W
Launch Vehicle:
PSLV-C11
Type of Satellite:
Science & Exploration
Manufacturer:
ISRO
Owner:
ISRO
Application:
Planetary Observation
Orbit Type:
Lunar

PSLV-C11/ Chandrayaan-1

• Chandrayaan-1
• PSLV-C11
• PSLV-C11/ Chandrayaan-1 Gallery
• Chandrayaan-1 Captures Lunar Surface
• PSLV-C11 Brochure
• Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for utilising Chandrayaan-1 data from Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and Hyperspectral Imager (HySI) payloads
• Chandrayaan-1 Mission Explained - Video

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Chandrayaan-1 Captures Lunar Surface

 

[Indx TechStyle]

About Chandryaan 2 (with Lander Rover, scheduled for 2017-18):
From ISRO:

Chandrayaan - 2
Chandrayaan 2, India’s second mission to the Moon, is an advanced version of the previous Chandrayaan-1 mission. It consists of an Orbiter, Lander and Rover configuration. It is planned to be launched as a composite stack into the Earth Parking Orbit (EPO) of 170 X 18,500 km by GSLV-Mk II. The Orbiter carries the combined stack up to moon till the Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI). The combined stack is then inserted into a lunar orbit of 100 km x 100 km. The Lander is separated from the Orbiter in this orbit.

The Orbiter with scientific payloads will orbit around the moon. The Lander will soft land on the Moon at a specified site and deploy the Rover. The scientific payloads onboard the Orbiter, Lander and Rover are expected to perform mineralogical and elemental studies of the lunar surface.

During 2010, it was agreed that Russian Space Agency ROSCOSMOS would be responsible for lunar Lander and ISRO will be responsible for Orbiter and Rover as well as Launch by GSLV. Later, due to a shift in the programmatic alignment of this mission, it was decided that the Lunar Lander development would be done by ISRO and Chandrayaan-2 will be totally an Indian mission.

Chandrayaan - 2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chandrayan -II Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre

For budget (78 crores last year for research):
http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2016-17/eb/sbe84.pdf

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Moon landing practice in Bengaluru
Chandrayaan’s Lunar Rover to be tested at Chitradurga.

An artist’s impression of Chandrayaan-II

BENGALURU: A small aircraft will be allowed to breach the 'no-fly zone' rules over the sprawling and high-profile 'Science City' near Chitradurga soon to help Indian space scientists address challenges of landing on the Moon and Mars.

Reason: this aircraft will carry a special payload-the lander-rover of Chandrayaan-II, the country's second shot at the Moon, drop it over an area scooped out area, akin to the lunar surface with scores of large craters, and monitor whether the lander-rover veers itself away from the pits to touch down on a flat tract with the help of an inbuilt autonomous system.

With more than 1.8 lakh craters, each measuring more than one km, dotting the surface of the earth's nearest astral neighbour, scientists at ISRO will carry out this critical test to ensure a landing on even surface ahead of the launch of Chandrayaan-II-an orbiter-lander-rover mission next year.

Objective: A descent onto a level surface with the help of inputs from the Orbiter High Resolution Camera (OHRC) will enable the rover to wander around, carry out onsite analysis of the Moon's soil and beam home scientific data through the orbiter. "This is the first time we are going to attempt to land on the Moon, so we want to be meticulous with our computation and technology," a top space scientists told Deccan Chronicle.

Unlike Chandrayaan-I's Moon Impact Probe (MIP), which crashed into the Moon, the lander will be designed to make a soft land and then to deploy the rover, he added.

The 20-kg rover will operate on solar power and move on wheels on the lunar soil. Around the same time as ISRO's test-landing at the 'Science City', DRDO has planned the maiden test flight of Rustom-II, an advanced Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) at the Aeronautical Test Range (ATR) in another part of the 8,000 acre campus.

This medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) UAV has a range of 250 km, and the capability to carry weapons as well as fly non-stop for five-six hours.

The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) onboard Rustom-II will help the UAV see through dense clouds. On completion of test flights, it will replace the Israeli Heron UAVs being used by the IAF and Indian Navy, according to sources in the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

So, here we got an update on Rustom 2 as well.

Space scientists said the orbiter would circle the Moon at an altitude of 100 km with five instruments onboard. Three of these would be new, while two others would be improved versions of ones flown onboard Chandrayaan-I. The orbiter would help beam scientific data garnered by the rover from the Moon's soil.

Area cordoned off

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar will inaugurate facilities of MoD at the high-profile 'Science City' near Chitradurga next month. A three km-long run, several hangars and ATC (Air Traffic Control) tower have been built to support projects like the Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) and electronic warfare (EW) systems, besides the Made-in-India 'Tejas' Light Combat Aircraft (LCA).

The campus of MoD has been cordoned off with no access even to scientists of Indian Institute of Science (IISc), who are readying a 1500-acre area next door for a host of laboratories and test facilities.

 

[Indx TechStyle]

@Akask kumar @rishivashista13 @Anupu @indiatester @Chinmoy

 

[indiatester]

@Indx TechStyle Was the rover already tested?

 

[Indx TechStyle]

@Indx TechStyle Was the rover already tested?

If driving the rover, rover design has been exhibited long ago. Obviously, you don't need to do a press release that your rover roves.
Your question must be:
Have the instruments of rover been tested?
So, some of them were already tested and some are being.

 

[Akask kumar]

@Indx TechStyle Was the rover already tested?

making moon rover is no big deal.. forget ISRO even IIT undergraduate and faculty can do it .. main challenge is landing safely ,communication, whole mission plan has to execute perfectly for it to succeed..

 

[Akask kumar]

@Indx TechStyle is cdy2 has a soil return mission too?? i will be surprised..

 

[Indx TechStyle]

@Indx TechStyle is cdy2 has a soil return mission too?? i will be surprised..

Nah! It may be Cdy-3 or 4 otherwise we would need heavier rockets for that.

 

[Akask kumar]

Nah! It may be Cdy-3 or 4 otherwise we would need heavier rockets for that.

then this isnt the CDY2 lander..

 

[Indx TechStyle]

then this isnt the CDY2 lander..

Most probably not or a concept design for future mission or we are yet not aware about ISRO's surprise plans.

 

[Indx TechStyle]

ISRO bracing to deploy rover on lunar surface

Deputy Director Satish Dhawan Space Centre V. Ranganathan.

India is getting ready to deploy an indigenously developed rover on the lunar surface for on-site analysis of various samples and relay them to the earth station.

Senior ISRO scientist and Deputy Director of Satish Dhawan Space Centre V. Ranganathan told The Hindu on Saturday that they were in advance stages of deploying the rover. The timing of its launch is not yet finalised.

Chandrayaan-II Mission includes launching of lunar explorations by geosynchronous launch vehicles (GSLV Mk-II) with clinical precision. The wheeled rover would be useful in using multiple applications by collecting soil and rock sediments for on-site analysis and transmitting the findings to the earth station.

ISRO has also taken up ambitious programme to build vehicles with cryogenic engines with bigger capacity than GSLV, Mr. Ranganathan, who came here to take part along with other scientists in World Space Week celebrations, said.

Stating that synchronisation of earth movement and the satellites was very important for their success, he said compared to all other countries, the success rate of India’s satellite launch programme was very impressive due to focus on quality, cost effectiveness and optimum utilisation of manpower.

Deputy Project Director of LVM-3 B.V.V.S.N. Prasada Rao, who is part of team from ISRO visiting the city, said India was ahead of other countries in space technology by continuously test-firing and deploying satellites of various types and configurations for use for communication and other applications.

LMV3, a full-fledged vehicle will be launched in the first half of 2017. Mr. Rao said the heavy launch capability launcher would enable ISRO’s self-reliance in launching of satellites. It will send four tonne class geosynchronous satellites into the orbit.

 

[Adioz]

2018 gonna be an exciting year:-

• Chandrayaan-2 launch
• INS Vikrant induction
• Indo-Pak border completely sealed

 

[Akask kumar]

ISRO bracing to deploy rover on lunar surface

Deputy Director Satish Dhawan Space Centre V. Ranganathan.

LMV3, a full-fledged vehicle will be launched in the first half of 2017. Mr. Rao said the heavy launch capability launcher would enable ISRO’s self-reliance in launching of satellites.

so GSLV mk3 launch delayed by few months?? as per plan its launch was in dec 2016
on side note. the guy in the pic looks like cousin of Nawaz sharif..

 

[Akask kumar]

And that's not vain probably.

http://m.thehindu.com/sci-tech/scie...-critical-crew-rescue-test/article9194536.ece
We will destroy a rocket deliberately on the Launch Pad to let the safety system make capsule escape from explosion.
Coo................oool!

as per the link u provided..

While the overall aim is to master the technology that aims at rescuing the crew if a launch is aborted at any stage, the present test will try out the scenario of aborting a launch at the pad itself,

no rocket will be destroyed..
there will be just CARE module and Abort test module mounted over it.. thats all..

few videos of PAD lauch abort test..

orion.. our lauch scape system will be similar to that..little smaller as our craft is lighter.


spaceX. entirely different lauch escape system.. but still no rocket destoyed..

 

[Indx TechStyle]

ISRO looking at putting a telescope on moon, says A S Kiran Kumar

 

[Akask kumar]

ISRO looking at putting a telescope on moon, says A S Kiran Kumar

whats the advantage in having a telescope on the moon's surface and around the earth orbit/sun sych orbit(like astrosat)?? idnt get it??