The scientific payload had a total mass of 90 kg and contained five Indian instruments and six foreign instruments.
Indian Payloads:
- TMC or the Terrain Mapping Camera is a CCD camera with 5 m resolution and a 40 km swath in the panchromatic band and was used to produce a high-resolution map of the Moon. The aim of this instrument was to completely map the topography of the Moon. The camera works in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum and captures black and white stereo images. When used in conjunction with data from Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI), it can help in better understanding of the lunar gravitational field as well. TMC was built by the ISRO's Space Applications Centre (SAC). The TMC was successfully tested on 29 October 2008 through a set of commands issued from ISTRAC.
- HySI or Hyper Spectral Imager performed mineralogical mapping in the 400-900 nm band with a spectral resolution of 15 nm and a spatial resolution of 80 m.
- LLRI or Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument determines the height of the surface topography by sending pulses of infrared laser light towards the lunar surface and detecting the reflected portion of that light. It operated continuously and collected 10 measurements per second on both the day and night sides of the Moon. It was successfully tested on 16 November 2008.
- HEX is a High Energy X-RAY Spectrometer for 30 – 200 keV measurements with ground resolution of 40 km, the HEX measured U, Th, 210Pb, 222Rn degassing, and other radioactive elements
- MIP or the Moon Impact Probe developed by the ISRO is an impact probe which consisted of a C-band Radar altimeter for measurement of altitude of the probe, a video imaging system for acquiring images of the lunar surface and a mass spectrometer for measuring the constituents of the lunar atmosphere. It was ejected at 20:00 hours IST on 14 November 2008. The Moon Impact Probe successfully crash landed at the lunar South Pole at 20:31 hours IST on 14 November 2008. It carried with it a picture of the Indian flag. India is now the fourth nation to place a flag on the Moon after the Soviet Union, United States and Japan.
Other Payloads:
- C1XS or X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer covering 1- 10 keV, mapped the abundance of Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, and Fe at the surface with a ground resolution of 25 km, and monitored solar flux. This payload is collaboration between Rutherford Appleton laboratory, U.K, ESA and ISRO. It was activated on 23 November 2008.
- SARA, the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer from the ESA mapped mineral composition using low energy neutral atoms emitted from the surface.
- M3, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper from Brown University and JPL (funded by NASA) is an imaging spectrometer designed to map the surface mineral composition. It was activated on 17 December 2008.
- SIR-2, a near infrared spectrometer from ESA, built at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Polish Academy of Science and University of Bergen, also mapped the mineral composition using an infrared grating spectrometer. The instrument is similar to that of the Smart-1 SIR. It was activated on 19 November 2008 and scientific observations were successfully started on 20 November 2008.
- miniSAR, designed, built and tested for NASA by a large team that includes the Naval Air Warfare Center, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman; it is the active Synthetic Aperture Radar system to search for lunar polar ice. The instrument transmitted right polarized radiation with a frequency of 2.5 GHz and monitored scattered left and right polarized radiation. The Fresnel reflectivity and the circular polarization ratio (CPR) are the key parameters deduced from these measurements. Ice shows the Coherent Backscatter Opposition Effect which results in an enhancement of reflections and CPR, so that water content of the Moon's Polar Regions can be estimated.
- RADOM, Radiation Dose Monitor Experiment from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences maps the radiation environment around the Moon. It was successfully tested on 16 November 2008.
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Chandrayaan