All About Space

The Moon Impact Probe (MIP) hit the moon surface on Nov-14-2008 at 20.31 hrs. The point of MIP’s impact was near the Moon’s South Polar Region.Weighing 34 kg at the time of its launch onboard Chandrayaan-1, the box shaped MIP carried three instruments – a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer. The video imaging system was intended to take the pictures of the moon’s surface as MIP approached it. The radar altimeter was included to measure the rate of descent of the probe to the lunar surface.

MIP’s 25 minute journey to the lunar surface began with its separation from Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft at 20:06 hrs (8:06 pm) IST. This was followed by a series of automatic operations that began with the firing of its spin up rockets after achieving a safe distance of separation from Chandrayaan-1. Later, the probe slowed down with the firing of its retro rocket and started its rapid descent towards the moon’s surface. Information from the its instruments was radioed to Chandrayaan-1 by MIP. The spacecraft recorded this in its onboard memory for later readout. Finally, the probe had a hard landing on the lunar surface that terminated its functioning.

Today Chandrayaan-1 entered lunar orbit.The spacecraft is now orbiting the moon in an elliptical orbit that over the polar regions of the moon. The nearest point of this orbit (periselene) lies at a distance of about 504 km from the moon’s surface while the farthest point (aposelene) lies at about 7502 km. Chandrayaan-1 takes about 11 hours to go round the moon once in this orbit.

This is my first post related to space and UFO's. As you all might be aware that the Mission was launched from Indian Space port of Sriharikota on Oct-22 at 6.22 hrs IST. It was a perfect launch meeting all the launch objectives.

Chandrayaan-1 will approach the Moons orbit on November 8, 2008. The spacecraft’s liquid engine will be fired to insert the spacecraft into lunar orbit.

Below you can see the types of orbits the vehicle takes from earth to reach moon.