ISRO and NASA Sign MOU
on Chandrayaan-1

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

Mr G Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO and Dr Michael Griffin, Administrator, NASA signing the MOU on Chandrayaan-1 with Dr K N Shankara, Director, ISRO Satellite Centre (to Mr Madhavan Nair’s right) and Dr J N Goswani (to Dr Griffin’s left), Director, Physical Research Laboratory.

On the signing of MOUs, Dr Griffin said “It is my hope and belief that as we extend the reach of human civilization throughout the solar system, the United States and India will be partners on many more technically challenging and scientifically rewarding projects”. Further he said “I very much look forward to the opportunity to see first hand India’s impressive space facilities, to meet with your scientists and engineers and to learn more about your remarkable work.”

Chandrayaan-1, scheduled during 2007-2008, is India’s first scientific mission to moon.
It’s 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, MiniSAR 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 MiniSAR 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.

Chandrayaan-1 Spacecraft

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.

India-US cooperation in Space:
The inclusion of US instruments on Chandrayaan-1 has provided further fillip to the Indo-US cooperation in the space arena which dates back to the very beginning of the Indian space programme. The very first sounding rocket, a Nike-Apache launched from Thumba on November 21, 1963, was a US made rocket that carried instruments to conduct ionospheric experiments over the earth’s magnetic equator that passes over Thumba. Several more such rockets were launched later for various scientific missions.

India conducted the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) in the mid 1970s for
which NASA repositioned its Application Technology Satellite (ATS-6) over the Indian Ocean. SITE involved deployment of Direct Reception TV sets in about 2400 villages across six states of India to receive educational programmes via ATS-6, covering agriculture, family planning, health and hygiene, etc. The experiment was hailed as the world’s largest sociological experiment. This played a significant role to demonstrate the application of satellites for TV-based developmental education and telecommunications for a large
country like India. This was followed by the establishment of multipurpose Indian National Satellite (INSAT) System in the 80s. All the four satellites under INSAT-1 series were built by a US Company to India’s specifications and three of them were put into orbit by US launch vehicles including INSAT-1B, orbited by US Space Shuttle Challenger. Today, INSAT has become the largest domestic satellite system in the Asia Pacific region, with all satellites designed and built in India.

In the field of remote sensing, India was one of the first countries to establish a reception station for receiving data from NASA’s Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS), later renamed as LANDSAT. This facilitated India to gain experience in the reception, processing and application of space-based remote sensing data. A number of joint experiment projects in remote sensing were also undertaken using LANDSAT data with the participation of end users. Later, India designed and built its own operational Indian Remote Sensing satellites and established National Natural Resources Management System for the application of data from these satellites. Today, India has the world’s largest constellation of civilian remote sensing satellites to provide data in a variety of spatial resolutions and spectral bands which is being received by several ground stations from all over the world including USA that meet the requirements of various applications in resources management.

In 1997, the Department of Space (DOS) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) from India and NASA and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration from US signed a Memorandum of Understanding for joint research in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Dr Michael Griffin, Administrator, NASA, at Mission Control Centre (MCC) in Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota

In November 2001, the Prime Minister of India and the President of United States issued a
joint statement that both sides would discuss ways to stimulate civil space cooperation. An important follow-up was the India-US Conference on Space Science, Applications and Commerce which was jointly organised by the Astronautical Society of India and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Bangalore during June 21-25, 2004 with sponsorships from ISRO and NASA, among others. The main objective was to strengthen and expand the cooperation between India and US in the field of space science and applications as well as related commercial activity. Dr Frederick Gregory, Associate Administrator of NASA, participated in this conference. One of the outcomes of the Indo-US Conference was 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 his visit to india, Dr Griffin visited ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram and Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.