Article Posted on : - Aug 06, 2009

Chandrayaan orbiting the moon.

BANGALORE (BNS): International space agencies, whose scientific payloads have been carried by India’s maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, will have time till January 2010 to complete their data analysis task, a senior ISRO official has said.

Three international space agencies and scientific institutes will be told “unambiguously” to complete their data analyses “at the earliest,” the official was quoted as saying by The Hindu.

“Most of the instruments have completed their work, including the Moon mineralogy mapper. We will see if the agencies are satisfied with the data they have received and if not, to specify the gaps that have to be filled,” the official said.

Scientists from US space agency NASA, the European Space Agency and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences – who have developed six scientific experiments on board the mission – have been called for a meeting here in September to review the mission.

The agencies will be given a window till January 2010 to collect all data they need as “they cannot take for granted” that the space craft will complete its two-year tenure, the official said.

This decision by ISRO follows the recent failure of the spacecraft’s star-sensor. The Indian space agency has replaced the sensors, which were vital in keeping the spacecraft oriented to the moon, with gyroscopes.