ISRO and NASA Sign MOU on Chandrayaan-1

http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/May09_2006.htm

ISRO and NASA Sign MOU on Chandrayaan-1
Indian Space Research Organisation
May 9, 2006

Mr G Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO, and Dr Michael Griffin,
Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of
USA today (May 9, 2006) signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) at ISRO
Satellite Centre (ISAC), Bangalore, on inclusion of two US Scientific
instruments on board India's first mission to Moon, Chandrayaan-1.
These
instruments are - Mini Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini SAR) developed by
Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University and funded by NASA
and Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), jointly built by Brown University and
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA.

Chandrayaan-1, scheduled during 2007-2008, is India's first unmanned
scientific mission to moon. The main objective is the investigation of
the distribution of various minerals and chemical elements and
high-resolution three-dimensional mapping of the entire lunar surface.
ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV, will launch Chandrayaan-1
into a 240 km X 24,000 km earth orbit. Subsequently, the spacecraft's
own propulsion system would be used to place it in a 100 km polar orbit
around the moon.

The Indian payloads on board Chandrayaan-1 include: a Terrain Mapping
Camera (TMC), a Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI), a High-Energy X-ray
spectrometer (HEX), a Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI) and a Moon
Impact Probe (MIP).

The two US instruments, Mini SAR and M3, were selected on the basis of
merit out of 16 firm proposals from all over the world received in
response to ISRO's announcement of opportunity. The main objective of
Mini SAR is to detect water in the permanently shadowed areas of lunar
polar regions. The objective of M3 is the characterisation and mapping
of minerals on the lunar surface.

Earlier, three instruments - Chandrayaan-1 Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer
(CIXS) from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, developed with
contribution from ISRO Satellite Centre; Near Infra-Red Spectrometer
(SIR-2) from Max Planck Institute, Germany; and Sub keV Atom Reflecting
Analyser (SARA) from Swedish Institute of Space Physics developed in
collaboration with ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre -- were selected
from the European Space Agency besides a RAdiation DOse Monitor (RADOM)
from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The inclusion of US instruments on Chandrayaan-1 has added fillip to
the
Indo-US cooperation in the space arena which dates
back to the very beginning of the Indian space programme. More
recently,
the India-US Conference on Space Science, Applications and Commerce
held
at Bangalore during in June 2004 led to the setting up of a Joint
Working Group to enhance the cooperation in civil space between India
and USA. The Joint Working Group, comprising representatives of
government, academic institutions and industries, had its first meeting
in Bangalore in June 2005.

During the signing of MOU today, senior NASA and US Embassy officials
and senior officials from ISRO and Ministry of External Affairs were
present. Dr Griffin also visited the laboratories at ISAC and
interacted
with senior scientists. He would also be visiting Vikram Sarabhai Space
Centre at Thiruvananthapuram and Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR at
Sriharikota.