Indias Moon Mission

Now its India turn to join the elite club. *The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced that the first lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, from India landed successfully on the moon on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday. The Indian flag was painted on the sides of Moon Impact Probe (MIP), one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, that successfully hit the lunar surface on November 14th, at 20:31 hrs (8:31 pm) IST. This is the first Indian built object to reach the surface of the moon. The point of MIP's impact was near the Moon's South Polar Region. It may be recalled that the modern Indian space program was initiated in 1962 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India. The two-year mission is aimed to map not only the surface of the moon, but what lies beneath. The unmanned moon mission was launched Oct. 22 from the Sriharikota space center in southern India. The box-shaped probe carried a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer. ISRO spokesman B.R. Guruprasad said that the probe from the orbiting mother spacecraft took pictures and gathered other data India needs for a future moon landing as it plummeted to a crash-landing at the moon's south pole. ニュースアニメ「インド初の無人月探査機、月面着陸に成功」 インド初の無人月探査機「チャンドラヤーン１号」が、月面着陸に成功したと、インド宇宙研究機関（ISRO）が発表した。「チャンドラヤーン」はサンスクリット語で「月の乗り物」の意。１０月２２日にインド南部スリハリコタの宇宙センターから打ち上げられ、ネルー初代インド首相の誕生日でもある１１月１４日に月面に着陸した。元首相は１９６２年に近代インドの宇宙計画を打ち出しており、ISROは歴史的な日になったと述べている。月探査を成功させた国は、現在まで旧ソ連、米、日、欧（ESA）、中となるが、今回の打ち上げはこれに次ぐものとなる。今後２年間をかけ、月面の様子を詳しく調べるほか、水や氷の存在についても調査する。今回の打ち上げにかかった費用は３８億６千万ルピー。

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YouTube | November 21, 2008

Tags:. .payloads. .unmanned. .pandit. .spacecraft. .hrs