Chandrayaan - indian mission to moon

ISRO, indian's space agency is gearing up for the chandrayaan mission to be launched by the end of this year. Mean while why not know about the chandrayaan the craft that will place India into the elite club.

The moon craft is cuboid in shape of approximately 1.50 m side and it weighs 1304 kg at launch and 590 kg at lunar orbit and accommodates eleven science payloads.

Well that is about the size and the capacity of chandrayaan, what about the power unit?

It is 3-axis stabilized spacecraft using two star sensors, gyros and four reaction wheels. The power generation would be through a canted single-sided solar array to provide required power during all phases of the mission. This deployable solar array consisting of a single panel generates 700W of peak power. Solar array along with yoke would be stowed on the south deck of the spacecraft in the launch phase. During eclipse spacecraft will be powered by Lithium ion (Li-Ion) batteries.

After deployment the solar panel plane is canted by 30º to the spacecraft pitch axis.

The spacecraft employs a X-band, 0.7m diameter parabolic antenna for payload data transmission. The antenna employs a dual gimbal mechanism to track the earth station when the spacecraft is in lunar orbit.

The spacecraft uses a bipropellant integrated propulsion system to reach lunar orbit as well as orbit and attitude maintenance while orbiting the moon.

The propulsion system carries required propellant for a mission life of 2 years, with adequate margin.

The Telemetry, Tracking & Command (TTC) communication is in S-band frequency.

The scientific payload data transmission is in X-band frequency.

The spacecraft has three Solid State Recorders (SSRs) on board to record data from various payloads.

SSR-1 will store science payload data and has capability of storing 32Gb data.
SSR-2 will store science payload data along with spacecraft attitude information (gyro and star sensor), satellite house keeping and other auxiliary data. The storing capacity of SSR-2 is 8Gb.
M3 (Moon Mineralogy Mapper) payload has an independent SSR with 10Gb capacity.


Related links
Watch the videos of chandrayaan-1
How chandrayaan-1 looks like
Who is actually taking chandrayaan-1 to moon?
From SLV to chandrayaan - follow the story of indian space program