Chapter: Gist of Press Information Bureau Articles

Topic: NASA Confirms Chandrayan’s Discovery Of Water On Moon

Q. What is the contribution of M3 in discovering water on Moon?

• The discovery of water on moon was till recently attributed to NASA’s Moon Mineralogy M a pp e r, M 3 on board India’s Chandrayan space craft. It was claimed that the instrument detected water on moon’s polar region on 14 November 2008 while the space craft was rotating the earth’s natural satellite in a 100 kilo meter circular orbit.

• It took the MIP 25 minutes after it was detached from the orbiting space craft to reach the moon’s surface. During that time before hard landing on moon’s surface, the MIP radioed all the information to Chandrayan which it instantly recorded in its onboard memory for reading out later. With the MIP’s sending of information to Chandrayan, India’s very first attempt to send a lunar probe was successfully concluded.  

Q. CHANCE?

The MIP, a 34 kg box shaped object carried the Chandra Altitudinal Composition Explorer, CHANCE which had three devices, a video imaging instrument, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer. When the news that the NASA had confirmed the MIP’s discovery of water on moon broke out, there was jubilation in ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre where CHANCE was developed.

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