Chandrayaan at Variety SF

Real science: Large quantities of water ice on moon

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:56:00 +0000

This post is based on a front page story in Bombay "Late City" edition of The Indian Express newspaper today, quoting multiple ISRO & NASA sources.

"New analysis of scientific data from" a NASA instrument called "Mini-SAR" "that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft" "found more than 40 small craters (2-15 km in diameter) with sub-surface water ice located at their base. The interior of these craters is in permanent sun shadow".

These craters are all located "in the lunar north pole". "there could be more than 600 million metric tons of water ice in the craters."

While previous investigations by ISRO & NASA have detected water on moon, "this is the first time that evidence has emerged of the presence of large quantities of lunar water."

Real science: How hydrogen forms from solar wind on the surface of moon?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:54:00 +0000

Latest reports based on observations of Chandrayaan-1's instruments explain the process.

Real science: "Water on moon" papers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:50:00 +0000

The announcement from NASA, later confirmed by ISRO, has 4 relevant papers, all published on 24 September 2009 online in Science magazine, outlining the find. Only abstracts are available without payment.

"Character and Spatial Distribution of OH/H2O on the Surface of the Moon Seen by M3 on Chandrayaan-1" by C. M. Pieters, J. N. Goswami, R. N. Clark, M. Annadurai, J. Boardman, B. Buratti, J.-P. Combe, M. D. Dyar, R. Green, J. W. Head, C. Hibbitts, M. Hicks, P. Isaacson, R. Klima, G. Kramer, S. Kumar, E. Livo, S. Lundeen, E. Malaret, T. McCord, J. Mustard, J. Nettles, N. Petro, C. Runyon, M. Staid, J. Sunshine, L. A. Taylor, S. Tompkins, and P. Varanasi. Abstract. Water signature "appears strongest at cooler high latitudes and at several fresh feldspathic craters. ...suggests that the formation and retention of OH and H2O is an ongoing surficial process."
"Detection of Adsorbed Water and Hydroxyl on the Moon" by Roger N. Clark. Abstract. "The amounts of water ... could be 10 to 1,000 parts per million and locally higher."
"Temporal and Spatial Variability of Lunar Hydration as Observed by the Deep Impact Spacecraft" by Jessica M. Sunshine, Tony L. Farnham, Lori M. Feaga, Olivier Groussin, Frederic Merlin, Ralph E. Milliken, and Michael F. A'Hearn. Abstract. "Deep Impact spacecraft found the entire surface to be hydrated during some portions of the day. ... strongest near the North Pole ... Hydration varied with temperature, rather than cumulative solar radiation ... comparisons between data collected one week (a quarter lunar day) apart show a dynamic process with diurnal changes in hydration that were greater for mare basalts (~70%) than for highlands (~50%). This hydration loss and return to steady state occurred entirely between local morning and evening, requiring a ready daytime source of water group ions, which is consistent with a solar wind origin."
"A Lunar Waterworld" by Paul G Lucey. Abstract.

I'm, sort of, disappointed. Must pay Science to access taxpayer-funded research!

"Water on moon" tidbits

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:48:00 +0000

BBC lament on "premature leak" of the news day before yesterday - by bloggers, twitterers, & Indian media.
Could there be underground water reservoirs there?

I mean - if newly created water on its surface can find the way to polar craters, could not some of it go down & find a home in some subterranean cavern? I haven't seen this idea in media; is there is a reason this cannot happen?
ISRO has began talking of change of objectives of Chandrayyan-2, due 2013. Instruments to explore a few centimeters to up to half a meter below the surface, rather than just a couple of mm M3 did.
Two men from ISRO were on a TV talk show yesterday night (on I think DD1). They clarified what "a liter of water per tonne of soil" means, by offering a simile: earth is supposed to be at an average temperature of 16C! Few of us see this temperature, & so rarely because it's average. Similarly, density of water in lunar soil varies very widely; some places are far richer than others.

Real science: Water on moon?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:20:00 +0000

Times Now, a TV news channel here, is reporting the NASA instrument aboard Chandrayaan-1 has found evidence of water.

Google News, however, is picking up conflicting reports: NASA about to officially make announcement today, ISRO chairman refusing to confirm the find, evidence of water moving around on moon, ...! Hopefully, next few weeks or months should clarify the picture.

Chandrayaan-1 denials!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:58:00 +0000

While Chandrayaan-1 has been in trouble since April, & the thing has been on & off news since last month, yesterday morning it finally went out of radio contact. ISRO is still hoping to regain contact, but no one is sure if it will be possible.

Initially, the on board device used to orient it using star charts burned out - so it could no longer automatically orient itself correctly relative moon. That was in April. So its orbit was doubled - means mapping resolution halved - & it was manually kept oriented from earth station near Bangalore. Apparently, higher orbit was either less fuel consuming or made manual control from earth easier. In either case, this event cut the life of craft to half, & about now it was supposed to have plunged to moon - or so I understood news reports over the last month.

Today's news reports also talk of other on board instruments burned out or recently shut off for fear of burn out.

The thing that I find upsetting is not that the craft has been having troubles. That's expected in a project of this kind. What I find really upsetting is continued official statements that the project is a complete success, that 95% mission is complete, that it is not a loss worthy of note, ...

I mean, recognize that the taxpayer funding the project has a bit of intelligence! A project that is primarily a mapping project goes half resolution when it's a third of its life through & dead half way through, & we are talking of complete success! Does someone intend not to learn what we need to out of the disaster? I can understand the need to reassure public & parliamentarians so funds of other moon & Mars projects won't be affected, but denying the issues isn't going to get us anywhere.

Related: All Chandrayaan posts.

Real science: Some lunar imagery, courtesy of Chandrayaan-1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:56:00 +0000

Both ISRO & NASA have posted lunar pictures taken by instruments on-board Chandrayaan-1, including some of lunar surfaces never seen before. ISRO's pictures aren't well annotated, but I loved the image on the right (click to enlarge to original size).

ISRO image gallery.
NASA images: Lunar poles, first look inside shadowed craters.

Note: Many of these probably aren't new. It's just that I didn't check Chandrayaan-1 image gallery last several months.

Note 18 June 2009: While there appear to be several interesting images, including of deep craters, far side, & underground structures, lack of annotations ensured I didn't get their significance & had to stick to my own sense of visual aesthetic beauty!!

Related: Chandrayaan posts.

Chandrayaan-1 update 4: Journey over, trajectory animation, a picture of moon, how to map moon, on cost, & some moon humor

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:58:00 +0000

Spacecraft has reached its final circular orbit around moon.

ISRO, 12 November 2008: "Today, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has successfully reached its intended operational orbit at a height of about 100 km from the lunar surface. This followed a series of three orbit reduction manoeuvres conducted during the past three days". This orbit passes "over the polar regions of the moon". Two of its "11 payloads – Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM) – have already been successfully switched ON."

Spacecraft will eject the "Moon Impact Probe (MIP)" on ~~Saturday (I think)~~ Friday evening (according to ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair, quoted by Indian Express, Bombay, dated 14 November 2008). While the nature of data the probe will gather is rather technical, what is getting most publicity is an emotional event - that it will plant India's flag on moon!

Related (added 14 November 2008):

A note on Moon Impact Probe.

Chandrayaan-1 trajectory animation.

Doug Ellison has posted an animation of the Chandrayaan-1's flight to moon in the form of an Apple QuickTime MOV file. [via Astronomy].

~~I've not yet seen the movie - so no comments on that.~~

Update 13 November 2008: I've now seen it. It's 82 MB download. Some great shots - yes, but it doesn't really show the trajectory taken by Chandrayaan-1 to reach moon. It's a shot of the ship taking off earth, picture of a British instrument on board, & some close flybys of moon. But the most interesting thing is the feel of space - I'm sure it doesn't quite show the real emptyness, but this approximation is what made it worth the download time.

Related (added 14 November 2008):

A picture of moon.

Couple of days back, ISRO had posted this picture of moon taken on 4 November 2008 from a distance of 3,11,200 km (note this click-location is rather close to earth). Click image for full sized original.

Related (added 14 November 2008):

Pictures of earth.

How will Chandrayaan-1 make a 3D map of moon?

R Prasad tells us "How Chandrayaan-1 will help compile a 3D atlas" of moon, at The Hindu newspaper of Madras. The article is based on the correspondent's interactions with "Dr. Kiran Kumar A.S., Deputy Director, Sensor Development Area, Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad." This Ahmedabad lab is where the "Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) on-board Chandrayaan-1 " was developed. I'm not clear how Dr Kumar relates to the team that built TMC - whether he was actually involved in the development project, or he's just a media communications man.

Among the various tidbits:

It can work only a third of the time due to some solar illumination considerations - in a 60 days window every 6 months.
Its 4k pixel digital camera clicks 3 pictures of each pixel from different angles - to overcome occlusion: "regions on slope where the viewing angle is smaller than the slope is not occluded, as the image of the slope will be available by the third view."
Each pixel represents 5m by 5m of lunar land.
4k pixels clicked together are in a line along the axis of the orbit - that's 4k * 5m = 20 km x 5m stretch at each click.
Along the orbital direction, "An area of 1.5 km of the moon is imaged in one second."

Related (added 14 November 2008):

Another perspective on Chandrayaan-1 cost.

A little after the current government in Delhi came to power, a Bombay newspaper ran a feature on the cost to taxpayer of our fat government. One item I remember was a table listing the market value of the bungalow of may be a half dozen senior ministers & members of parliament - each between Rs 90-110 cr!! If Delhi has seen the real estate value escalation that Bombay has seen during the last 4 years, each of these would now command a market price of may be Rs 200 cr!

Compare that with Chandrayaan-1 cost: Rs 380 cr. Yes - it's a lot of money. But any 2 of those mansions could have funded this project!

Related (added 14 November 2008):

Benefits of going to moon (humor)!

This is for readers comfortable with written Hindi.

Some low-end jokes about the benefits of going to moon, in this Episode 15 of the serialized Hindi novel "Taboot" by Zeashan Zaidi.

Whole novel - i.e., the episodes published so far - is available here. Not quite top class, but very light read & arrives in installments that take only a few minutes to read. Its new episodes are among the fiction my Bot SF feed automatically picks up & delivers to inbox.

Novel is advertised a humorous science fiction. While I've seen humor, science fiction part is probably yet to come. 3 cranky guys from (I think) Delhi on a treasure hunt (I think) somewhere in Assam.

What next?

All Chandrayaan posts.
All moon posts, including fiction set on moon. A-rated stories probably won't disappoint. For free fiction, search for "full text" (without quotes). Or browse through all free fiction posts, including stories unrelated to moon.
Subscribe to Variety SF master feed, Chandrayaan feed, or moon posts feed.

Breaking news: Chandrayaan-1 enters lunar orbit

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 13:42:00 +0000

Related: More recent Chandrayaan updates are available.

About 2 hours back, Chandrayaan-1 successfully made the transition from an elliptical earth orbit to an elliptical (& polar) moon orbit.

Now it's down down down (I think in 4 steps) to its final perch of 100 km above the moon in a circular orbit.

There was some degree of nervousness since yesterday. "Experts recall that about 30% of unmanned moon missions of the US & the former Soviet Union failed during LOI [lunar orbit insertion]," says today's Time of India newspaper, Bombay edition, without attributing the statement to any specific experts. This is the first time I've seen reference to others failures before a maneuver; till now, it was all confidence & positive vibes. Hope this event marks a return to former positive self.

What next?

All Chandrayaan posts.
All moon posts, including fiction set on moon. A-rated stories probably won't disappoint. For free fiction, search for "full text" (without quotes). Or browse through all free fiction posts, including stories unrelated to moon.
Subscribe to Variety SF master feed, Chandrayaan feed, or moon posts feed.

Chandrayaan-1 update 3: Transfer orbit; trajectory questions clarified; camera testing; mapping radioactivity, magnetic anomalies, & water ice; ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:58:00 +0000

Related: More recent Chandrayaan updates are available.

Sections of this somewhat longish post are ordered from the perspective of science fiction fans; if you are not one, interesting stuff may be down below rather than early in the post.

Mapping magnetic anomalies.

The Martian Chronicles on a Swedish instrument called SARA on board the ship: "SARA will also be able to study magnetic anomalies, presumably because the magnetic fields will change how the solar wind interacts with the surface."

"Magnetic anomaly" caught my attention because this is what begins the fuss in Arthur Clarke's famous novel "2001 A Space Odyssey". TMA it was called in the story - Tycho Magnetic Anomaly, because it was found in the Tycho region.

What's the use of "Radioactive mapping"?

Radioactive mapping is one of the things the mission will do. But what is it? And why do it?

The Martian Chronicles clarifies the purpose of the on board Bulgarian instrument that will do this job: "The whole goal is for this thing to get bombarded with radiation and see how much there is, what range of energies the particles have, and figure out how that dose might change for different locations on the moon. The Apollo astronauts were only out of Earth’s protective magnetic field for a few days, but for colonists spending months or years out there, it’s important to know how much radiation shielding they will need, and what type of radiation is the most dangerous."

Detecting water ice.

The Martian Chronicles on an on board Indian instrument called HEX: "a thick ice deposit would absorb x-rays that normally would be emitted to space, so by measuring changes in x-ray emission, HEX might be able to detect water ice."

Chandrayaan-1 Project Director answers some questions on ship's trajectory.

Via R Prasad's article titled "How Chandrayaan-1 is raised to higher orbits" in The Hindu newspaper of Madras. Article is based on correspondent's interaction with "M. Annadurai, Project Director of Chandrayaan-1". Click image above for full size original.
[Thanks for link, Dennis]

Why this multistage trajectory? Answer is, primarily, caution: "We could have done it [in] one shot, but there is a possibility of missing the moon. So we have adopted an incremental increase in the orbits’ perigee." I suppose "apogee" is meant, & "perigee" is a misquote.

Also, "There will be a need to correct the orbit once in two weeks to maintain a 100 km circular orbit" on moon. I guess at the end of its useful life - meaning propellant & fuel exhausted - it will simply fall somewhere on moon?
Related: Arthur Clarke's novel "Islands in the Sky" lightly touches upon the subject of human littering in space. A habit now when it doesn't cause much damage but a costly danger when space travel becomes common (because habits die hard). Not that ISRO is alone - everyone traveling to space seems to be doing it today.

Mr Annadurai answers several other questions too, including why fire at perigee & how moon capture will happen.

A related point: Reducing the speed - needed for capture by moon & lowering of orbit there - requires that "the orientation of the spacecraft is reversed — turned 180 degrees". This implies the craft is fitted with special orientation rockets that can fire simultaneously in more than one directions. I'd not thought of it; I guess it's needed by all craft that orbit earth too.

Chandrayaan-1 is now on "Lunar Transfer Trajectory".

ISRO announcement dated 4 November 2008: "The fifth and final orbit raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was successfully carried out today (November 4, 2008) morning at 04:56 am IST... With this, Chandrayaan-1 entered the Lunar Transfer Trajectory". Current orbital parameters: apogee = 380,000 km. Perigee not specified in the announcement. Click image for original size picture.

"Chandrayaan-1 will approach the Moon on November 8, 2008". That's when next manoeuvre is due - to transfer it from earth orbit to moon orbit.

Camera testing: Some pictures of earth.

From ISRO announcement dated 31 October 2008: "The Terrain Mapping camera (TMC) ... was successfully operated on October 29, 2008".
Note: IST is India time. 5:30 hrs ahead of GMT, no day light saving adjustments.

Announcement provides 2 black & white pictures of earth (click pictures for original sized images):

"taken at 8:00 am IST from a height of 9,000 km shows the Northern coast of Australia".
"taken at 12:30 pm from a height of 70,000 km shows Australia’s Southern Coast".

I'm puzzled why they published pictures of Australia rather than India. I assume it was engineering considerations, rather than oversight.

"The camera can take black and white pictures of an object" & "has a resolution of about 5 metres." I suppose they meant 5m from a distance of 100 km, the target lunar orbit, & that earth pictures being distributed were at far lower resolution?

Chandrayaan-2 work sharing with Russia clarified.

ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair: "The lander will be from Russia... The rover will be a joint development between Russia and India."

Spacecraft, of course, is Indian.

Mapping "the whole moon"!!

In the last update, I'd quoted Narendra Bhandari, a member of the Science Advisory Board for Chandrayaan-1 as saying that one of the mission objectives was "topographic mapping. That will be done for the whole moon at 5m resolution".

I assume he meant it for part of the moon visible from Chandrayaan-1 orbit around it. I mean - it cannot see "the whole moon" from a single orbit. Or do they intend to change orbits during its 2 year duty?

Gossip: Chandrayaan-3 (manned landing in 2015).

I seem to have misplaced a juicy quote from some babu or neta in Delhi that gave me a smile. It appeared in a local newspaper a few days back - I think Indian Express, but I'm not sure.

I interpreted the long winded quote as saying that: Delhi was upset that Chandrayaan-3 was announced publicly by ISRO bosses, & didn't let the neta concerned get publicity! He clarified that the project is not likely to be killed for lack of budget.

Related older report: G Madhavan Nair, Chairman of ISRO: "We are planning to carry two human beings into the space in our first manned space mission... The project outlay is Rs 120 billion".

What next?

All Chandrayaan posts.
All moon posts, including fiction set on moon. A-rated stories probably won't disappoint. For free fiction, search for "full text" (without quotes). Or browse through all free fiction posts, including stories unrelated to moon.
Subscribe to Variety SF master feed, Chandrayaan feed, or moon posts feed.

Real science: Why is Chandrayaan-1 trajectory so complex?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:50:00 +0000

Related: More recent Chandrayaan updates are available.

US manned launches took 4 days to reach moon; some Soviet launches took two. Why are we taking a fortnight?

While I haven't seen any official explanation from ISRO nor an analysis of Chandrayaan-1 trajectory elsewhere, my speculation is: answer might be a trade between cost & travel time. They are probably trying to get a gravity boost from earth rather than burning fuel - hence lower weight, hence lower cost. Someone better qualified at making sense of trajectory might offer a saner comment.

More (& wild) speculation - safety. By always staying in earth orbit or moon orbit - even a highly elliptical one - could you increase chances of recapturing the ship even if something went wrong during the moon-capture maneuver?

What next?

All Chandrayaan posts.
All moon posts, including fiction set on moon. A-rated stories probably won't disappoint. For free fiction, search for "full text" (without quotes). Or browse through all free fiction posts, including stories unrelated to moon.
Subscribe to Variety SF master feed, Chandrayaan feed, or moon posts feed.

Real science: Chandrayaan-1 update 2: Fourth orbit raising, mission objectives clarified, Russia on Chandrayaan-2, & foreign cost concerns

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:58:00 +0000

Fourth orbit raising manoeuvre.

From ISRO Announcement dated 29 October 2008:

"The fourth orbit raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was carried out today (October 29, 2008) morning at 07:38 am IST." Orbital parameters after this manoeuvre: apogee = 267,000 km, perigee = 465 km.
"One more orbit raising manoeuvre is scheduled to send the spacecraft to the vicinity of the moon at a distance of about 384,000 km from the Earth." That will be the last orbit raising - on November 3; after that it's down, down, down in moon orbit.

Clarifying Chandrayaan-1 objectives.

Narendra Bhandari, a member of the Science Advisory Board for Chandrayaan-1 on mission objectives: "Three things will be primarily done. One is what we call topographic mapping. That will be done for the whole moon at 5m resolution which has not been done so far. The other is the mineral mapping... Third thing we are doing is chemical and radioactive mapping."

Chandrayaan-2 lander/rover is a joint project with Russia.

From elsewhere (this has appeared in local newspapers too): "Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) is joining with ISRO for development of Chandrayaan-2 Lander/Rover... The rover will have an operating life-span of a month. It will run predominantly on solar power."

Indian spaceship, but a joint lander/rover.

Footnote.

Am I the only one puzzled? How come the comments that the Chandrayaan-1 spend is wasteful in a poor country are coming only from outside India? I'm yet to see it in an Indian newspaper. Even Indian online sources, when they talk about it (not often), seem to talk about it quoting external sources! Not to say there are no local detractors - you can never get a billion people to agree on anything. But I don't see even a hint of this sentiment in my own interactions with friends, or in local print media (I rarely watch TV news - so not sure of that).

Personally, I think the publicity alone might be worth the money. Not counting the satellite launch business that might come this way because of publicity.

What next?

All Chandrayaan posts.
All moon posts, including fiction set on moon. A-rated stories probably won't disappoint. For free fiction, search for "full text" (without quotes). Or browse through all free fiction posts, including stories unrelated to moon.
Subscribe to Variety SF master feed, Chandrayaan feed, or moon posts feed.

Real science: Chandrayaan-1 update: Trajectory, a cost perspective, progress, & rover/human landing schedule

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:58:00 +0000

Related: More recent Chandrayaan updates are available.

ISRO has this fantastic schematic of the 3D trajectory of the spacecraft on its way to moon. Click image alongside for full sized image at ISRO site. I wish they had animation showing current location of the craft too!

Rest of this post is based in three articles on the subject from today's Times of India newspaper, Bombay edition.
Note: 1 cr(ore) = 10 million. For numbers above 1000, most languages in India have words in multiples of 100 (rather than 1000 in English). So 1 lakh = 100,000; 1 crore = 100 lakh; ... These words are very commonly used in Indian variant of English.

Chandrayaan-2 that puts a rover on moon: 2010. Cost Rs 500 cr, about a quarter more than Chandrayaan-1 (Rs 380 cr). I thought it was due 2011?
Manned landing: 2015. At Rs 12,000 cr, it will cost a bit more than 3 times the cost of Chandrayaan-1.
Chandrayaan-1 cost "about half the price of a jumbo jet".
Over its 3 year development life, Chandrayaan-1 consumed about 4% of the budget of ISRO. OK - so it wasn't a major burden.
"The second orbit-raising maneuver ... was carried out at 5:48 am on Saturday". Orbit parameters after the maneuver: apogee = 74,715 km, perigee = 336 km.

What next?

All Chandrayaan posts.
All moon posts, including fiction set on moon. A-rated stories probably won't disappoint. For free fiction, search for "full text" (without quotes). Or browse through all free fiction posts, including stories unrelated to moon.
Subscribe to Variety SF master feed, Chandrayaan feed, or moon posts feed.

Real science: Chandrayaan-I: Trajectory, similarity with a Fredric Brown story, & next steps

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:00:00 +0000

Related: More recent Chandrayaan updates are available.

Today morning, the first spacecraft from India for a mission beyond earth's orbit took off for a 2 year orbiting job around moon - "to provide a detailed map of the mineral, chemical and topographical characteristics of the moon's surface".

I'll restrict this post to what is not said elsewhere - or, at least, not emphasized. For information on mission: There are any number of news reports on the subject on pretty much any India-centric news service, & a Google search on "Chandrayaan" 4 hours after the launch threw up a quarter million documents, not counting those on Google News.

Trajectory: some education for me.

I got some education on trajectory of moon travel - it's a very complicated, rather than a near straight line or a simple curve.

Both Heinlein's "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" & Arthur Clarke's "Maelstrom II" gave the impression of some sort of straight flight - you blast off from one at escape velocity or may be a bit more in a certain direction, & eventually enter orbit or fall down the other. May be I was not paying attention. And I never looked up the trajectories taken by previous moon missions by other countries.

Here are quotes on Chandrayaan-I trajectory "after separation ... from launch vehicle ... Expected 19 minutes after lift-off" from a data box on the front page of today's Indian Express newspaper, Bombay, Late City edition:

"Will circle the earth in elliptical orbit. Will fire rockets at scheduled stages to go into progressively higher orbits until it reaches 386,000 km from the earth. Will take 11 days to go around the earth in this orbit."
"In the second revolution in this elliptical orbit, spacecraft will slow down to get sucked into moon's gravitational field after which it will start orbiting."
"Then begins stepwise lowering into lower & lower orbits until it reaches the targeted orbit of 100 km from the moon."

This report from Indian Express online edition has a slightly different version of trajectory parameters.

Update 1: This picture of trajectory makes things clearer. Click image for original sized BBC picture.

Update 2: Much better trajectory image from ISRO site. Click image to enlarge.

When in doubt, use brute force.

I'd read this advice in my early days of programming. Seems to apply to a lot of situations.

Once in target lunar orbit, the spacecraft throws down something called "Moon Impacter Probe (MIP)." Expectations from 30 kg MIP are similar to those from Mars impacter in Fredric Brown's "Earthmen Bearing Gifts" that brought doom to Martians, though Chandrayaan's is a much lower energy projectile & thrown from close range.

For Indian readers: some food for thought.

Today's Bombay edition of The Economic Times newspaper gives these cost figures for various moon missions, apparently adjusted to today's costs in US dollars:

Chandrayaan-I (India) (2008) - $86m
Chang'e (China) (2007) - $187m
Kayuga (Japan) (2007) - $480m
Apollo (NASA, US) - $135b (yes, billion)
From elsewhere: "NASA's upcoming half-a-billion-dollar Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter".

While it's a genuine occasion to celebrate, I think the chest thumping on how we are the cheapest is unwarranted:

I don't think comparison with Apollo is fair. That was a pioneering project in days when much less was known about the subject. And we are talking unmanned launches. I find the $0.5b upcoming NASA project a better comparison point.
It will be a fair comparison when we convert $86m to purchasing power parity (PPP) numbers for local content. A locally made product costing $1 in US will likely cost you Rs 7 in India for equivalent local product, when the exchange rate is may be Rs 50/$ ~~47/$~~! Assuming Chandrayaan had a lot of imported components, I would reckon the PPP cost would be no less than $86x4 = $344m. No so cheap.
I guess Chinese number would also be higher, once you look at it from purchasing power parity angle.

What next?

"landing a rover on the moon in 2011". Apparently, the budget is already approved by parliament.

May not yet be time to give up on space travel as impractical.

Related older bit from Technology Review about ISRO's scamject-based reusable launch vehicle "Avatar", due demo flight next year: "Avatar could thus deliver a 500-to-1,000-kilogram payload into orbit for about $67 per kilogram... Current launch prices range from about $4,300 per kilogram via a Russian Proton launch to about $40,000 per kilogram via a Pegasus launch."

OK - Avatar is for low-earth orbit. But still, $67/kg is about $4000 to launch me, not counting the cost of life support, radiation shielding, etc. May be space is not quite a lost frontier. What could our great-grandchildren expect 100 years from now?

And we are still in government monopoly era in this sector. If experience since early 1990s is any indication, fun in India really begins once private players enter a sector. What was it that really limited private players in the US in this sector? Was it lack of ideas on how to make money off moon or just lack of interest?

What next?

All Chandrayaan posts.
All moon posts, including fiction set on moon. A-rated stories probably won't disappoint. For free fiction, search for "full text" (without quotes). Or browse through all free fiction posts, including stories unrelated to moon.
Subscribe to Variety SF master feed, Chandrayaan feed, or moon posts feed.