Article Posted on : - Nov 14, 2008

Students holding Indian tricolor after paying tributes to Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru on his 119th birth anniversary, being celebrated as 'Children's Day' in Hyderabad on Friday. PTI Photo

NEW DELHI (BNS): India's Moon Impact Probe, painted in Indian tricolour, would be released from Chandrayaan-1 just a few minutes after 8 pm today, marking a new milestone in country's space explorations.

Only Russia, the US and the European Union are the other entities which have marked their presence on the lunar surface.

Coinciding with the Children's Day and planting Indian flag on the lunar surface, the MIP is a critical part of the ambitious Chandrayaan-I project launched on October 22. "MIP will be released at 8.03 pm or 8.04 pm tomorrow. It's expected to hit the lunar surface at around 8.30 pm," ISRO spokesperson S Satish was quoted as saying by PTI. Originally, the MIP was to be detached by 10 pm, but was advanced by two hours.

The 35-kg MIP is attached to the top deck of the main orbiter and would be released during the final 100 km x 100 km orbit, according to ISRO. In about 25 minutes, the MIP will hit the lunar surface.

The objective of the MIP is to "demonstrate the technologies required for landing the probe at a desired location on the Moon and to qualify some of the technologies related to future soft landing missions," says ISRO

The MIP will help ISRO understand the finer nuances of designing and developing technologies for developing a future lunar probe, which will have to be soft landed on the surface before it can carry out its missions. The MIP will also help ISRO scientists to explore the moon surface from very close range.

The MIP has three instruments on it. The radar altimeter will provide measurement of the altitude of the MIP that would be one of the many crucial inputs required for designing the future lunar probe.

The second payload is a Video Imaging System that would capture the surface of the moon as the MIP descents to the lunar surface. The third payload is a mass spectrometer that would measure the constituents of tenuous lunar atmosphere during descent.

The MIP is essentially a honeycomb structure that houses all the payloads and other systems. Besides the three instruments, the MIP also carries a separation system, the de-boost spin and de-spin motors that would help control the MIP movement as it descents to the lunar surface. The MIP also has an avionics system, which supports the payloads and provides communication link between MIP and the main Chandrayaan orbiter, and would provide the crucial data from the time of its separation to impact. The MIP also has a thermal control system on board.

All the data collected by MIP will be first transmitted to the main orbiter, which in turn will send it back to the ground station outside Bangalore during visible phases.