Hurtling towards the lunar surface, the shoe-box-sized probe was not just a scrap of metal, but an intricately designed machine to carry three instruments inside it. A video imaging system, a radar altimeter, and a mass spectrometer so that they could tell Isro what they were about to find.

While the video imaging system was designed to take photographs and transmit them back to Bengaluru, the radar altimeter was integrated into the probe to track the descent rate as it approached the lunar surface. The mass spectrometer, on the other hand, served the purpose of analysing the exceedingly sparse lunar atmosphere.

As the surface began to come up, the instruments packed inside began transmitting data to the orbiter overhead, which was recorded in its readout memory to be later sent to India for deeper analysis.

Nearly 25 minutes after it jettisoned from Chandrayaan, the Moon Impact Probe met its fate - a hard landing on the surface of the Moon.

Isro made history by crashing a spacecraft on another world that had remained an enigma to the human species since time immemorial.

But what did it achieve? The data from these three instruments would potentially go on lay the foundation of the Chandrayaan-2 in 2019.

The information relayed by the impact probe unraveled the world of the Moon like never before. After all, it was the first to detect signatures of water on the surface during its nearly 25-minute-long plunge. The findings were later confirmed by Nasa's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, revealing to the world that Luna was not bone-dry as earlier thought.

But, what made Isro even more proud was the fact that the cuboid-shaped probe bore the Tricolour on its body. As it became one with the Moon on the night of November 14, 2008, the Tiranga was planted on the Moon forever.

Source: IndiaToday