What is Chandrayaan-1

On 56th indepence day, August 15 2003, India's Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced. "Our country is now ready to fly high in the field of science. I am pleased to announce that India will send her own spacecraft to the moon by 2008. It is being named Chandrayaan-1". In Sanskrit (language of Ancient India) "Chandrayaan" means "Moon Craft".

Moon has always fascinated Indians from ancient days and now 21st century india is ready to land on moon! Chandrayaan-1 is the first mission towords the dream.

In Chandrayaan-1, the lunar craft would be launched using Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) weighing 1304 kg at launch and 590 kg at lunar orbit. Lunar craft would orbit around moon 100 km from moon surface.

ISRO inviated international space orgnization to particpate in the project by providing suitable scientific payloads(instrument for experiments). ISRO selected
3 (C1XS, SIR-2, SARA) payload from ESA (European Space Agency)
1 (RADOM) from BSA (Bulgarian Academy of Science),
2 (MiniSAR, M3) from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

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