{"id":637409,"date":"2026-10-21T23:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T23:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/637409\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T23:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T23:16:11","slug":"on-this-day-in-space-oct-21-2008-india-launches-its-1st-mission-to-the-moon-with-chandrayaan-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/637409\/","title":{"rendered":"On this day in space! Oct. 21, 2008: India launches its 1st mission to the moon with Chandrayaan-1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chandrayaan-1<\/a> launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on an Indian rocket called the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, or PSLV-XL. (Launch occurred at 8:52 p.m. EDT, though it was about 6:22 a.m. local time at the launch site on Oct. 22.)<\/p>\n

It arrived in lunar orbit<\/a> about three weeks later and dropped off the Moon Impact Probe, which crashed into the moon<\/a> on Nov. 14. The rest of the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft stayed in orbit, where it collected and transmitted data from the moon to Earth for about a year. The mission ended abruptly 14 months ahead of its planned end date when scientists lost contact with the probe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"An\n<\/p>\n

An Indian PSLV rocket launches the Chandrayaan-1 moon mission on Oct. 21, 2008 EDT (Oct. 22 local time in India). (Image credit: ISRO)Why it mattered<\/p>\n

The Indian Space Research Organisation<\/a>, or ISRO, had a lot riding on the success of Chandrayaan-1 moon mission, which marked the first-ever deep space mission by the Indian space agency. It was also the first mission to the moon for India, a country that hopes to launch its own crewed spacecraft and build a space station.<\/p>\n

Chandrayaan-1 did more than just demonstrate that India’s space program was capable of launching missions to the moon; it also returned some amazing science results, like evidence of water ice on the moon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

“In September 2009, scientists published results of data <\/a>collected by the American M3 instrument which had detected absorption features on the polar regions of the surface of the Moon usually linked to hydroxyl- and\/ or water-bearing molecules,” NASA said in a mission overview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft carried 11 instruments to study the moon, five of them built by ISRO. The rest were experiments for the European Space Agnecy and NASA.<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n

“In addition to the five Indian instruments, the spacecraft carried scientific equipment from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, and Bulgaria,” NASA said.<\/p>\n

It took until Nov. 8, 2008 for Chandrayaan-1 to enter lunar orbit, where it stayed until contact was lost in August 2009, most likely due to a power supply failure caused by overheating.<\/p>\n

“This was short of the spacecraft\u2019s planned two-year lifetime, although ISRO noted that at least 95% of its mission objectives had been accomplished by then,” NASA wrote.<\/p>\n

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\"NASA's\n<\/p>\n

NASA’s Mini-SAR instrument, which flew aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles (2 to 15 km) in diameter. (Image credit: NASA)<\/p>\n

India did not stop at the moon with Chandrayaan-1. In 2019, the country launched the Chandrayaan-2<\/a> orbiter, which carried the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover. Chandrayaan-2 reached lunar orbit successfully, but the Vikram landing failed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Chandrayaan-3 misson<\/a> followed in 2023, which successfully landed a new Vikram lander and Pragyan rover<\/a> near the moon’s south pole. India plans to launch the Chandryaan-4 mission to return moon samples to Earth in 2028<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive<\/a> and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\nOn this day in space! Oct. 20, 1970: The Soviet Union launches Zond moon flight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter On Oct. 21,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-637409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}