Chandrayaan-1 launches — India's first lunar mission

At 6:22 on the morning of 22 October 2008, a PSLV rose into the dawn sky above Sriharikota, on India's east coast, carrying the country's first spacecraft bound for another world. Chandrayaan-1, 'Moon craft' in Sanskrit, was the work of an agency better known for weather and communications satellites, flying on a budget of 386 crore rupees, around 88 million dollars, astonishingly lean for a planetary mission. Half a century after the space age began, India was going to the Moon, and doing it in its own frugal style.

The 1,380-kilogram spacecraft carried 11 instruments, five Indian and six from international partners, an unusually open payload for a nation's first deep-space attempt. It entered lunar orbit on 8 November 2008 and began mapping from 100 kilometres up. Six days later came the gesture the country remembers: the Moon Impact Probe, painted with the Indian tricolour, detached and struck near Shackleton crater at the lunar south pole on 14 November, Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday. The impact point was named Jawahar Point in his honour.

The science that followed changed everyone's idea of the Moon. NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, riding aboard Chandrayaan-1, detected the unmistakable spectral signature of water and hydroxyl molecules spread thinly across the lunar surface, while the impact probe's own CHACE instrument had sensed water vapour during its descent. Announced in September 2009, the discovery overturned decades of textbook certainty that the Moon was bone dry, and pointed straight at the polar deposits that every major lunar program now chases.

Contact with the orbiter was lost on 29 August 2009, after 312 days and more than 3,400 lunar orbits, short of the planned two years but with the great majority of its objectives met. The story had one more twist: in 2017, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory found the silent spacecraft with ground-based radar, still faithfully circling the Moon. Chandrayaan-2 and the historic south-pole landing of Chandrayaan-3 in 2023 grew directly from the mission that began this morning.

Mission Data

Launch

22 Oct 2008, 06:22 IST, Sriharikota

Launch vehicle

PSLV-C11

Launch mass

1,380 kg

Instruments

11 (5 Indian, 6 international)

Cost

₹386 crore (approx. US$88 million)

Mission end

29 Aug 2009, after 3,400+ lunar orbits

Key Facts

The Moon Impact Probe struck near Shackleton crater on 14 November 2008, Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday, carrying the painted Indian tricolour to the lunar surface; the site was named Jawahar Point.
The water discovery came from a NASA instrument flying on an Indian spacecraft, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, and the impact probe's CHACE instrument independently detected water vapour on the way down.
The entire mission cost about ₹386 crore, under 90 million dollars, a fraction of comparable lunar missions elsewhere.
In 2017, NASA's JPL re-found the long-silent orbiter using ground-based interplanetary radar, still circling about 200 km above the Moon eight years after contact was lost.
With instruments from India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria, it carried one of the most international payloads ever flown to the Moon at the time.

Why It Mattered

Chandrayaan-1 delivered one of the most consequential discoveries in lunar history: water on the Moon. That finding redefined the Moon from an inert museum piece into a destination with usable resources, and it is the scientific root of today's rush to the lunar south pole by Artemis, Chang'e and Chandrayaan alike. For India, the mission proved that a frugal, internationally collaborative approach could produce first-rank planetary science, establishing ISRO as a deep-space agency and opening the road that led to Chandrayaan-3's south-pole landing in 2023.

Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre / Government of India, GODL-India

Official source

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Key Facts

The Moon Impact Probe struck near Shackleton crater on 14 November 2008, Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday, carrying the painted Indian tricolour to the lunar surface; the site was named Jawahar Point.

The water discovery came from a NASA instrument flying on an Indian spacecraft, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, and the impact probe's CHACE instrument independently detected water vapour on the way down.

The entire mission cost about ₹386 crore, under 90 million dollars, a fraction of comparable lunar missions elsewhere.

In 2017, NASA's JPL re-found the long-silent orbiter using ground-based interplanetary radar, still circling about 200 km above the Moon eight years after contact was lost.

With instruments from India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria, it carried one of the most international payloads ever flown to the Moon at the time.