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India's first mission to the Moon — and one of the most scientifically important lunar missions in decades. Chandrayaan-1 discovered water molecules on the Moon's surface, changing our fundamental understanding of Earth's closest neighbour.
Watch: Chandrayaan-3 Soft Landing — LiveChandrayaan-1 — from Sanskrit: chandra (moon) + yāna (vehicle) — was India's first lunar mission, launched on October 22, 2008, from SDSC SHAR on a PSLV-C11 rocket. It placed a 590 kg spacecraft into lunar orbit and conducted a comprehensive scientific study of the Moon over 312 days.
The mission carried 11 scientific instruments — 5 from ISRO and 6 from international partners including NASA, ESA, and Bulgaria. It was a global collaboration that produced globally significant science.
The crowning achievement came when NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument aboard Chandrayaan-1 detected unambiguous spectroscopic evidence of water molecules and hydroxyl radicals on the lunar surface — particularly near the poles. This was one of the most significant lunar discoveries since the Apollo era.
ISRO Instruments: Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC), Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI), Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI), High Energy X-ray Spectrometer (HEX), Moon Impact Probe (MIP)
International Instruments (6 from 5 agencies): NASA — Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) and Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR). ESA — C1XS (X-ray spectrometer) and SIR-2 (near-infrared spectrometer). Bulgaria (STIL) — RADOM radiation monitor. Germany (MPS) — contributed to C1XS detector development. Sweden (IRF) — contributed to the SIR-2 instrument. Five nations, one Indian spacecraft, one Moon.
On November 14, 2008 — Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday — Chandrayaan-1 released the Moon Impact Probe (MIP), a small 34 kg probe that deliberately crashed into the lunar south pole at the Shackleton Crater. In the 25 minutes it took to descend, MIP captured video, measured the lunar atmosphere, and detected water vapour near the surface.
The MIP carried the Indian tricolour painted on its sides — making India one of a very small number of nations to have placed its flag on the Moon. The crash site was named Jawahar Point.
The most significant discovery of Chandrayaan-1 — and one of the most important lunar discoveries since Apollo — was the detection of water molecules (H₂O) and hydroxyl radicals (OH) on the Moon's surface by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3).
The discovery was published in the journal Science in September 2009. The data showed that water molecules are concentrated near the lunar poles, in permanently shadowed regions where temperatures stay below −230°C — cold enough for water ice to survive for billions of years.
This confirmed decades of speculation and transformed the Moon from a dry, dead rock into a world with resources that could sustain future human exploration. Every lunar programme that followed — Artemis, Chandrayaan-3's south pole targeting, China's lunar plans — was influenced by what Chandrayaan-1 found.
All of Chandrayaan-1's commands and science data — including the historic water discovery — were routed through the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu, Karnataka. The IDSN's 18-metre and 32-metre dish antennas tracked Chandrayaan-1 across 400,000 km of space for 312 days without interruption. Every one of the 70,000+ images it sent home passed through these antennas. IDSN is the silent backbone of every ISRO deep space mission.