Moon mission unit busy as the clock ticks

via TOI

BYALALU (off Bangalore-Mysore highway): The huge, white dish antenna gradually rotates, acting on the commands given out by the control panel. Inside the telemetry centre below the antenna are engineers tapping command keys and peeking curiously into some signals. They are tracking some stars that are lightyears away from the Earth - the Cassiopeia and Tauras.

At the nondescript village Byalalu, 40 km off Bangalore, which smacks of poverty and underdevelopment, is this Rs 100 crore Deep Space Network (DSN) set up by the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network to track the country's first unmanned spacecraft for the Moon mission project, Chandrayaan-1.

Chandrayaan being scheduled for October (the September schedule has been postponed), the countdown has already begun for DSN. The station is the back-end support system and spacecraft signal monitoring unit set up on a 135-acre plot.

The DSN gains importance, more so, after the spacecraft crosses 1 lakh km-distance from Earth as other ISRO stations can monitor only up to this distance. The spacecraft, once launched, takes 300 hours to orbit the Moon and has a lifespan of about two years.

"We were given a timeline to prepare for the mission. We are fully ready and are doing the qualifying tests. Since the system is up and running, we are tracking the stars that are very far from Earth," say engineers at the station.

The DSN has the indigenous 32-metre dia dish antenna, a joint venture of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and the Electronics Corporation of India Limited which is the biggest so far in India. Another small antenna - 18 mtr dia - is a back-up for the big dish. Both the antennae will play a key role in Chandrayaan-1 and also Chandrayaan-2, the second Indian Moon mission, slated for a launch after about four years.

Keeping fingers crossed and hoping for the best!