India today joined an elite league of nations by successfully launching her first moon mission -- Chandrayaan-1. A visibly confident set of Indian space scientists headed Indian Space Research Oroganisation's (ISRO) chairman Dr G Madhavan Nair today successfully concluded the first phase of the moon mission when the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft reached a highly elliptical initial orbit around six hours after lift off.
Despite several flights conducted at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota since 1971, today's lift off of ISRO's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C11) was a remarkable feat in itself.
Since the beginning of the 52-hour countdown that started on Monday, Sriharikota had been witnessing heavy rainfall from the North-East monsoon. Despite heavy downpour right through Tuesday and early hours of Wednesday the rain gods provided a smidgen of luck for India's maiden moon mission by giving a very short break from rain that perfectly coincided with the scheduled lift off time.
At exactly 6:22 am today PSLV-C11 took off, visible to the spectators' eyes for barely three seconds before disappearing into thick grey clouds over Sriharikota. Minutes after the take off, rains took over Sriharikota again.
Later the mission observers confirmed that the launch was a "perfect text book launch".
Two and a half hours after the lift-off, Dr Nair along with a dozen of his senior colleagues briefed the media and said that real success of the moon mission will be known only after November 8, when Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft's orbit will be finally lowered to its intended 100 km height from the moon's surface. "Once spacecraft leaves the earth bound orbit, it is like jumping into a dark well even though our scientists have planned this mission perfectly," said Dr Nair.
Mylswamy Annadurai, project director for Chandrayaan-1 went a step further and said the success would be counted only after completion of the two year operational phase of the mission.
Dr Nair added that India's first lunar mission is 99 per cent scientific. With an array of instruments on board, Chandrayaan-1's will prepare a three-dimentional atlas of both near and far side of the moon. It will also conduct chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface for distribution of minerals and chemicals like magnesium, aluminium, silion, calcium, iron and titanium and high atomic number elements like radon, uranium and thorium.
Even before Chandrayaan-1 begins its mission, ISRO is all set to begin its work on Chandrayaan-2, a mission that intends to collect samples from the moon's surface, analyse and send back the results data to earth. The government has approved the Rs 425 crore Chandrayaan-2 mission.
Annadurai said, "Logically Chandrayaan-3 will aim to collect and bring back samples to the earth, though this mission is in a very conceptual stage now."
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