September Postponement of India’s Lunar Chandrayaan-1

Another delay by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) of its first lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 has occurred, originally planned to launch on April 9, then to early July, and now until late September. With one of the main reasons being delayed payload arrivals, the July delay was for extra needed time for integrating the experimental payloads with their spacecraft.

According to the ISRO spokesman, S. Satish, the decision was made May 27 for postponement of the mission at one of their regular meetings to review the project’s progress. Not saying which international payloads were delayed, he simply said there were “unforeseen” problems in interfacing the payloads with Chandrayaan-1, but all the problems have been resolved and testing is going on as normal at their ISRO Satellite Center in Bangalore, India.

On April 28th, two domestic and eight foreign satellites were placed in orbit, considered their most complex mission ever from the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Taking place from the launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, ISRO’s second launch pad on the east coast of southern India, six strap on boosters were used to carry ISRO’s Cartosat-2A and India Mini Satellite-1 satellites, in addition to eight nano-satellites built by universities and research institutions several countries, including Canada. According to the news, all ten satellites were successfully delivered in their “intended path?”

India became world recognized to the outside world when the “Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS)” was established, the first of its kind in India. On Wednesdays, all the locals and tourists gather round to watch the launching of the rockets in the southern tip of India, located at Thumba near Trivandrum (also known as Thiruvananthapuram). The area is an important one due to the fact it is extremely close to the Earth’s magnetic equator. ISRO has announced they plan to launch 180 number of RH-200 rockets from this area over the next five years.

The international payloads include: an X-ray Spectrometer, Atom Reflecting Analyzer, and an infrared camera, all supplied in cooperation with the European Space Agency; a Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar and Moon Mineralogical Mapper, both from the United States; and a Radiation Dose Monitor from Bulgaria.