India on the Moon
Well, that was fast — apparently I didn’t pay close enough to the schedule, as I thought this was going to happen sometime next month - Chandrayaan-I Impact Probe Lands on Moon:
Developed by ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre of Thiruvananthapuram, the primary objective of MIP is to demonstrate the technologies required for landing a probe at the desired location on the moon.
The probe will help qualify some of the technologies related to future soft landing missions. This apart, scientific exploration of the moon at close distance is also intended using MIP.
During its 20-minute descent to the moon’s surface, MIP took pictures and transmitted them back to the ground. The first pictures are expected to be made public on Saturday…
The MIP consists of a C-band Radar Altimeter for continuous measurement of altitude of the probe, a video imaging system for acquiring images of the surface of moon from the descending probe and a mass spectrometer for measuring the constituents of extremely thin lunar atmosphere during its 20-minute descent to the lunar surface.
The MIP withstood the impact of a hardlanding after it hit the lunar surface.
Interesting that it appears to have survived the impact of the hard landing. Should be fun to see the pictures on Saturday.
