Indian Moon Mission To Launch Next Month

Anil Kandangath writes with word that the Indian moon mission plans (mentioned earlier on Slashdot) are about to be put to the test. "While the spacecraft itself will not land on the Moon, it will act as an orbiter and land a rover on the surface. The spacecraft is being launched next month sometime between October 22 and October 26. The spacecraft payload includes 11 payloads (including one from NASA) and will perform remote sensing and studies of the lunar surface. The mission is estimated to cost Rs 386 crore (~ 84.3 million USD)." Update: 09/21 18:29 GMT by T : Thanks to reader Anil Gaddam for pointing out that this figure had been originally misstated as 7.7 million USD.

88 million USD

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=386+crore+inr+in+usd&btnG=Search

Misconversion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. Summary says 386 crore, but the conversion is only for 36 crore?

386 crore Indian rupees = 84.00518 million U.S. dollars

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=386+crore+inr+in+usd&btnG=Search

Get your math correct

[Anonymous Coward]

1 US Dollar = 47 Indian Rupees

1 crore = 10 million

386 crore rupees ~ 82 million USD

Cheap, I know. But you are an order of magnitude off.

Re:Hmm. Maybe thats closer to 84 million USD

[shank001]

The mission is estimated to cost Rs 386 crore (~ 84 million USD)."

Fixed.

Anonymous Coward.

[Anonymous Coward]

from the ISRO site,go look it up yourselves

The budgetary estimate for realising the proposed Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 stands at Rs. 386.00 crores (about $76 million). This includes Rs. 53.00 crores (about $11 million) for Payload development, Rs. 83.00 crores (about $17 million) for Spacecraft Bus, Rs. 100.00 crores ($20 million) towards establishment of Deep Space Network, Rs. 100.00 crores ($20 million) for PSLV launch vehicle and Rs. 50.00 crores ($10 million) for scientific data centre, external network support and programme management expenses.

Crore, lakh etc

[shas3n]

Indians use a different system of counting. After the thousand, they have a name for every second power of ten (unlike the western system of naming every third power). The system goes like this: 1000: 1e3: Thousand 100 thousands: 1e5 : Lakh 100 lakhs : 1e7 : Crore So 386 crores at about 46 INR a dollar is about 86 million USD.

Re:Tin Foil Hat comment

[Anonymous Coward]

> They didn't name their lander Kali by chance did they?

Chandrayaan-I is the name of the program and the spacecraft. http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/home.htm

Chandrayaan is Sanskrit for "Moon Craft" http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Chandrayaan

Thus if the "Moon Impact Probe" has a name at all, it's probably Sanskrit for moon impact probe. ;-)

Chandrayaan-II has the lander/rover. The manned mission is planned for 2020. http://chandrayaan.wordpress.com/2007/04/29/manned-moon-mission-by-2020/

It's said that India's goal is to find He-3 on the moon for fusion research. Maybe they should rename the program Shiva? (And yes, I do know that Shiva is the _destroyer of evil_ and not just a destroyer of things in general.)

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

> I feel sorry for the people at NASA and JPL,...

Ahem, JPL is NASA.

JPL (Pasadena, CA) does NASA's unmanned exploration.

JSC (Houston) is Mission Control for NASA manned flights.

KSC (Cape Canaveral) is NASA's launch facility.

etc. http://www.nasa.gov/about/sites/index.html

Re:88 million USD

[cyanid3]

Majority of Indians prefer to use lakhs/lacs instead of hundred thousand and one crore instead of ten million. Summary is written by an Indian.

Re:namaste

[Hal_Porter]

Screw that. India is a parliamentary democracy and a long term rival of China. This ain't Star Trek. Let's talk to the Aussies and get them to ship that uranium. Maybe we can negotiate a military alliance.

Oops, I mean namaste. Congratulations on your mostly peaceful use of rockets and nuclear technology

No rover on this mission.

[lessgravity]

The Chandrayaan-2 mission will be the first rover mission and is scheduled for 2011.
Great info about the mission here [wordpress.com]

Re:88 million USD

[brianjlowry]

I followed your link and it says 85 million.

Re:TFS is wrong

[RasputinAXP]

84 million US$, actually.

Chandrayaan I is carrying 2 NASA payloads

[Quetzo]

There are 2 NASA payloads selected for the Chandrayaan I, not one.

1. The MiniSAR [chandrayaan-i.com]: To detect water ice in permanently shadowed regions on the lunar poles.
2. The M3 [chandrayaan-i.com]: A mineral mapper.

Re:88 million USD

[Anonymous Coward]

reagan screwed us. We were ready to convert and he could not understand it so he stopped the nation. What a dolt he was.

Re:Misconversion?

[nospam007]

>It's why it it's so cheap. They're running it on a 386 with 4 megs of RAM.

Awesome!
Each of the NASA space shuttle's five on-board computers has the equivalent of only 400K RAM.

Impactor

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. This mission will carry a tiny impactor equipped with a radar altimeter, a video camera (who says science can't be fun?), and a mass spectrometer. Actually, even calling it an impactor isn't quite right, because the purpose isn't the impact, but the data it gets on the way in.

I would be pretty impressed if they land a rover in 2011. It sounds like they currently haven't nailed down an overall architecture, and landing a rover is fairly tough business. I'd give them another 2-3 years to fill in all the details.