Chandrayaan 1 & 2

Chandrayaan

India so far has two orbital probes that have photographed the surface in a way that covers Apollo, and have more in the pipeline.

Their data are downloaded primarily at their own Deep Space Network sites in Bangalore, but they have also received back up from sites in Australia and the US. Conspiracy theorists have claimed that this allows interference with the data, but have never once been able demonstrate that such interference has taken place.

Both probes have used a relatively low resolution ‘Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC), while Chandrayaan-2 also has the Optical High Resolution Camera (OHRC). The latter has the highest resolution camera to date, and photographed the Apollo 11 & 12 sites as a means of ‘ground truthing’ its instrumentation. The TMC instrument for both probes have forward, rear (or ‘aft’) and nadir (downward) facing cameras.

TMC and OHRC data for both probes can be obtained via their mapping page. Files for Chandrayaan-1 can also be obtained by searching here, and for Chandrayaan-2 here. All their sites require registration. It’s worth mentioning that the mapping page layer for Chandrayaan-1 images is not at all reliable, and positions can be out by quite some distance.

Chandrayaan-1 Chandrayaan-2

Before and after views of the landing site of Japan’s SLIM lander, as seen by Chandrayaan-2’s OHRC camera.