France and India are to proceed with the Megha Tropiques joint mission to study the tropical atmosphere after switching to the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) IRS satellite bus to ease the pressure on French space agency CNES's budget, which had brought the project close to cancellation.
The jointly developed spacecraft will be launched by India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in 2008-9, into an 867km (540 miles) -high orbit inclined 20° to the equator. The satellite will study the contribution of the convective water cycle to tropical climate dynamics.
Under a memorandum of understanding signed in Bangalore on 12 November, Megha Tropiques will carry the Madras multi-frequency microwave scanning radiometer developed jointly by ISRO and CNES, which will also supply the Saphir microwave humidity sounder and Scarab scanning radiometer budget sensor.
Madras will collect data on convective systems, Saphir will map the vertical humidity profile and Scarab will provide data on the Earth's energy budget.
ISRO, meanwhile, has shortlisted experiments from Bulgaria, Germany, Sweden, the UK and USA for inclusion in India's first Moon probe, Chandrayaan-1, scheduled for launch by PSLV in 2007. The 525kg (1,150lb) remote-sensing spacecraft, which will enter a 100km-circular lunar polar orbit, will accommodate several 10kg international science instruments.
Shortlisted payloads include a UK X-ray spectrometer; German infrared spectrometer; Bulgarian radiation monitoring experiment; NASA miniature synthetic-aperture radar; and a Swedish atom analyser to be developed in collaboration with ISRO.
RADHAKRISHNA RAO / BANGALORE
Source: Flight International
