India's lunar probe set to land on moon | View Chat

OVER THE MOON: The Moon Impact Probe has the Indian flag painted on both the sides.

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New Delhi: It's slightly smaller than your TV cabinet and weighs a bit more than your school-going kid. But it's going where no TV and no kid has ever been before.

It's called the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) — India's first attempt at touching down on the lunar surface.

Don’t let its size fool you, for there's a lot tucked away inside the MIP. There's a device to constantly check its height as it falls, another to check what the composition of air on the moon, and a video camera to photograph the moon from close range.

Those photographs will help the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) decide where to land India's first moon rover a few years from now.

The MIP also has the Indian flag painted on its sides and a Sanskrit shloka on one side.

The MIP will detach from the Chandrayaan a 100 km above the moon. As it falls, it will keep sending information back to the satellite.

Closer to the surface, rockets will be fired, to slow down its speed and soften impact. After half an hour of free fall, the MIP will crash-land on the south pole of moon.

It was former president APJ Abdul Kalam who thought of sending MIP to the moon. If it weren't for him, Chandrayaan would only have orbited the moon.

Moon Impact Probe highlights:

• MIP to touch down on the moon's surface at approximately 2000 hrs IST

• MIP will detach from the Chandrayaan 100 km above the moon

• MIP will crash land on lunar South Pole

• MIP has a video camera on board to photograph the moon

• MIP has an Indian flag painted on both sides and a Sanskrit shloka on one side

• MIP is the brainchild of former President A P J Abdul Kalam