Chandrayaan-I

India's maiden moon mission Chandrayaan-I has reached a major milestone as scientists completed the integration of all instruments onto the spacecraft and are aiming to launch it by September 19..Space scientists at ISRO last week completed the integration of the 11 instruments, six indigenous and five under international cooperation, onto the spacecraft which is no bigger than a typical office cubicle.Chandrayaan-i will be launched atop a polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV), India`s workhorse rocket with a streak of nine consecutive flawless missions.The spacecraft will also carry near infrared and x-ray spectrometers and a laser altimeter to determine the altitude of the lunar craft for spatial coverage of various instruments. These payloads will help researchers ascertain the composition and topography of the lunar surface.The probe will relay video imagery, altitude information and spectral data back to earth through the Chandrayaan mothership, which will be in a lunar orbit 100 km away.The mineral composition will be determined by the hyperspectral imaging spectrometer operating in 400-900 nanometer band with a spectral resolution of 15 nm and spatial resolution of 80 metres with a swath of 20 km.The deliveries of Chandrayaan 1`s five other international instruments began last August, when NASA`s moon mineralogy mapper was flown to India from the jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California.Nicknamed m3, the 15-pound imaging spectrometer will map the moon`s natural resources through visible and near-infrared wavelengths at higher resolutions than any instrument before.