Chandrayaan-1 temperature rises

The temperature inside Chandrayaan-1 has increased after a sudden increase in lunar temperature during its lunar orbit.
M Annadurai, project director of Indian’s moon mission, has been quoted as saying, “Now the moon, our satellite and the sun are in same line this means our craft is receiving 1,200 watts of heat from the moon and 1,300 watts from the sun per meter square.”

ISRO has said that November – December is the time during which the summer cycle of the Moon takes place. With the moon and the sun aligned with each other, the outside temperature can go up to 123° C. The temperature of the side of the Moon that does not face the Sun plummets to -223° C.

The temperature inside Chandrayaan-1 has gone up to 50° C. The ISRO has switched off or reduced the use of several instruments, like mission computers,  in Chandrayaan-1.

Mr. Annadurai said that the temperature within Chandryaan-1 had to be kept below 50° C, to safeguard the payloads in the craft from irreversible damage.

Mr. Annadurai has said that they have also rotated Chandrayaan-1 by 20 degrees, which along with the shutting down of certain instruments, has led to a dip in the temperature to 40 degree C.

As of now, all the instruments in the Chandrayaan-1 are in order and functioning well.

As part of the measures taken to deal with the heat, ISRO will raise the orbit of Chandrayaan-1, which is in orbit 100km away from the moon, in case all other methods fail.

ISRO expects the temperature of the Moon to come back to normal by December 2008.

ISRO plans to switch on Chandrayaan-1’s high-voltage payloads SARA and Hex after that.

As of now, out of Chandrayaan-1’s eleven payloads, the payloads that have been switched on are, the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC), the Hyper spectral Imager (HySI), Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM), Moon Impact Probe (MIP), and the Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI).

The TMC has already sent pictures of the equatorial and the polar regions of the Moon. The HySI has sent pictures of the Lunar cratelet and other lunar images.

The antennas of the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) are regularly receiving data and pictures sent by Chandrayaan-1.