Spaceflight
India is awaiting clearance from the US government to finalise a US payload for the country’s first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, says Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Madhavan Nair.
The lunar probe is to be launched in 2007 using India’s four-stage, 1t-to-sun-synchronous polar Earth orbit Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The 525kg (1,050lb) satellite will be placed in a 100km polar orbit around the Moon with a lifetime of two years.
The USA will provide a miniature synthetic-aperture radar to help map the polar lunar landscape and search for deposits of water ice in cold traps up to a depth of a few metres.
“We have already selected European payloads for Chandrayaan-1 and we are now awaiting clearance from the US administration for inclusion of the US payload,” says Nair.
The technology the European Space Agency is providing includes an X-ray spectrometer, an X-ray solar monitor to record the incident of solar X-ray flux and a near infrared spectrometer to detect and measure lunar mineral abundances.
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