Chandrayaan-1
India's first Moon mission found water on the lunar surface and a new kind of lunar rock.
Key facts
- Agency
- Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
- Type of mission
- Orbiter and impact probe
- Target
- The Moon
- Launched
- 22 October 2008
- Status
- Ended 2009
Chandrayaan-1 orbited the Moon for about ten months and carried instruments from India, Europe and the United States. On 14 November 2008 it released a small impact probe, which struck near the south pole and measured the thin lunar atmosphere on the way down.
Water on the Moon
The orbiter's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, built by NASA, measured the colours of sunlight reflected from the surface. In 2009 it detected the fingerprint of water and hydroxyl, a molecule of one oxygen and one hydrogen atom, bound into the surface soil, strongest towards the poles. Two other spacecraft passing the Moon confirmed it. Before then, the samples returned by Apollo had made the Moon look bone dry.
A pink mineral
The same instrument found patches of rock rich in magnesium spinel, a hard, pinkish mineral, with very little pyroxene or olivine. This rock type had not been recognised on the Moon before. It probably comes from deep in the crust, dug up by large impacts. Spinel is also common in the oldest solids of the Solar System, found in carbonaceous chondrites, though it forms there in a completely different way.
Why it matters to meteorites
Orbital maps of minerals and elements let scientists ask which parts of the Moon a lunar meteorite could have come from. Chandrayaan-1's maps added detail to that search. Contact was lost on 28 August 2009, but the silent spacecraft was found by radar, still in orbit, in 2016.
Key dates
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 22 October 2008 | Chandrayaan-1 launched on a PSLV rocket from Sriharikota. |
| 8 November 2008 | Entered orbit around the Moon. |
| 14 November 2008 | The Moon Impact Probe struck near the south pole. |
| 28 August 2009 | Contact with the orbiter was lost. |
| September 2009 | The discovery of water and hydroxyl in the lunar surface was announced. |
See where this mission fits among all the others in the mission timeline.
Did you know?
Chandrayaan means 'moon craft' in Sanskrit.
The spacecraft was found again in 2016 by ground-based radar, still circling the Moon years after it fell silent.