Chandrayaan-1
On the 15th of August, 2003, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee unveiled the Chandrayaan project’s trajectory during his Independence Day speech. This initiative marked a substantial leap for India’s space programs. The notion of a scientific Indian expedition to the Moon was first proposed in 1999 during a gathering of the Indian Academy of Sciences. This idea gained traction in 2000 through the efforts of the Astronautical Society of India. Following this, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) established the National Lunar Mission Task Force, which concluded that ISRO possessed the necessary technical expertise to undertake a lunar mission.
In April 2003, a meeting of over 100 esteemed Indian scientists spanning various fields such as planetary and space sciences, Earth sciences, physics, chemistry, astronomy, astrophysics, engineering, and communication sciences took place. During this meeting, the Task Force’s recommendation to initiate an Indian lunar exploration was discussed and endorsed. Within six months, in November, the Indian government granted approval for the mission’s progression.
The initial phase encompassed the launch of the primary lunar orbiters. Launched on the 22nd of October, 2008, aboard a PSLV-XL rocket, Chandrayaan-1 marked a significant achievement for ISRO. The Moon Impact Probe, an instrument carried by the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, made a groundbreaking discovery of water on the Moon. Alongside this discovery of water, the Chandrayaan-1 mission accomplished various other objectives, including lunar mapping and atmospheric profiling.
