When talking about space exploration, India can be mentioned
as a country that is frequently heard nowadays. It is because of their decades
of hard work and sacrifice.
India's first lunar exploration mission, Chandrayaan I, was
successfully launched on October 22, 2008, from Sriharikota. The Chandrayaan I
probe has a mass of 1380kg and was launched by ISRO's PSLV-XL-C11 rocket.
The probe was taken to a geosynchronous orbit by the PSLV
rocket and its thrusters changed its orbit to a long elliptical orbit,
gradually rotating around the Earth for several rounds and enlarging it to
reach the Moon in November 2009. After it was caught by the gravitational force
of the moon, its thrusters were activated the speed was reduced and it entered
a spherical orbit at a distance of 100 km from the moon.
A map of the moon
was made from the collection of pictures of the moon taken from this probe.
ISTRO also discovered a lot of information about the water on the moon by Chandrayaan
I. The available Impact Lander could collect information.
But the star
tracking system in Chandrayaan I overheated under the influence of the sun's
radiation and it became inactive in less than the expected time.
However, the excellent service performed by Chandrayaan I
enabled it to collect a large amount of data required for a return mission to
the Moon, as evidenced by subsequent missions.