Posted on 05/09/2006 12:58:04 AM PDT by Srirangan
Edited on 05/09/2006 4:29:23 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Bangalore: ISRO and NASA signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Tuesday on the inclusion of two US scientific instruments on board India's mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-I.
ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair and NASA Administrator Michael Griffin signed the MoU at the ISRO Satellite Centre in Bangalore.
The first instrument will be sent to find out whether there is any water on the Moon surface, while the second will study its mineral composition.
The two US instruments are called:
> Mini Synthetic Aperture Radar- which has been developed by Applied Physics Laboratory in Johns Hopkins University.
> Moon Minerology Napper - which is being jointly built by Brown University and Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA.
Both these instruments have been developed and funded by NASA.
The instruments were selected on the basis of their merit among 16 other proposals that were received in response to ISRO's announcement of the opportunity, the Indian Space Research Organisation said.
Chandrayaan-I
Chandrayaan-II, scheduled for 2007-2008, is India's first unmanned scientific mission to Moon.
It is the most ambitious mission of ISRO till date.
The spacecraft will come near 100 km above Moon surface and will carry out nine experiments - including a reconnaissance of the dark side of the Moon.
"Chandrayaan-I is essentially a scientific mission to map the Moon's geophysical features and chemical composition of its surface so as to understand its origin," the Programme Director of Chandrayaan-I said..."
Excerpt. Continued: IBN Live.com
Minerology makes me sleepy, too.
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