Welcome To Indian Space Research Organistaion

Moon: Exploration During the Space Age

After the Soviet Luna 24 brought back soil and rock samples from the Moon in 1976, a huge gap of about 14 years occurred in the exploration of the Moon.

Clementine (1994)

Moon again became the target of exploration only in 1990. In that year, Japan launched a spacecraft called Hiten towards the Moon. Later, the American Galileo spacecraft also looked at the polar areas of the Moon during its long journey to Jupiter. And in 1994, the American Clementine spacecraft that orbited the Moon created great excitement in the scientific community. The reason was its detection of what appeared to be water ice
in the south polar region of the Moon. To
follow-up that information, the US launched Lunar Prospector in 1998. Again, that spacecraft too provided additional information which appeared to indirectly indicate the presence of water ice on the moon.

Hiten (1990)

Lunar Prospector (1998)

Exploration of the moon:
The Renaissance

With the dawn of the new millennium, a renaissance began in the field of lunar exploration. Many countries and international organisations started spacecraft programmes to explore the Moon. They include the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan, China, the United States and Russia. India's Chandrayaan-1 too is the result of this great revival of humanity's interest in exploring the Moon.

As part of this renewed interest about the Moon, ESA launched SMART-1 in 2003, Japan launched Kaguya in September 2007, China launched Chang'e-1
in October 2007 and India launched Chandrayaan-1 in October 2008.

In 2009, The US launched Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter as well as Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) . All these Spacecraft sought to find answers to many interesting questions about the moon that haunt the humanity even today.


Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (2009)		Chandrayaan-1 (2008)