To hear ISRO trumpet, you might think the road to Low Lunar Orbit was but a hop, skip and a jump away from a multiple satellite launch. The history of first time lunar navigation, makes the following sound too much like 'famous last words.' As much as Humans of Good Will Everywhere wish ISRO the best, let's hope they didn't actually wait until "tomorrow" to begin their "3rd Quarter" planned lunar orbiter launch."Jubilant ISRO chief says work on moon mission (begins) tomorrow"
ChennaiOnline "Life made easy"
Sriharikota: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chief G Madhavan Nair today said the work on "Chandrayan," India's first moon mission, would start tomorrow.
"After the much better than text-book precision launch of PSLV-C9, which has injected into orbit as many as ten satellites, scientists are thrilled and geared up to launch the work on Chandrayan tomorrow itself," he said, addressing a post launch press conferernce.
Describing today's successful mission as a remarkable moment for ISRO and India, Mr Nair said for the first time, ISRO had launched ten satellites simultaneously.
"We have shown to the world, India is cabable of launching multiple satellites in single mission", he said adding Russia had launched 13 satellites using single rocket, "but we do not know the results." Scientists were thrilled by today's success and they would be starting the work on Chandrayan tomorrow itself. "We have targeted to achieve the moon mission in the third quarter of this year and are confident of achieving the target," he said.
Chardrayan is the first Indian Mission to the Moon devoted to high-resolution remote sensing of the lunar surface features in visible, near infrared, X-ray and low energy gamma ray regions. This will be accomplished using several payloads already selected for the mission. In addition, a total of about ten kg payload weight and 10 W power are earmarked for proposals which are now solicited.
The mission is proposed to be a lunar polar orbiter at an altitude of about 100 km.
