ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Chandrayaan programme

Hi kiddo! Do you want to learn about something amazing that India did in space? It's called the Chandrayaan programme.

Okay, so let's start from the very beginning. You know that there is a big round thing up in the sky at night that we call the moon, right? Well, scientists wanted to learn more about the moon, like what it's made of and how it formed a long, long time ago.

So, they decided to send a special spacecraft to the moon. The spacecraft was named Chandrayaan, which means "Moon craft" in Hindi. It was launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in 2008.

Now, Chandrayaan had some really cool instruments on board that could study the moon's surface and send back information to scientists on Earth. Some of these instruments included cameras that could take pictures of the moon, a radar that could explore the moon's underground, and a spectrometer that could analyze the moon's soil and minerals.

Chandrayaan travelled over 3,80,000 km to reach the moon and then it followed a special path that allowed it to orbit around the moon. This means that it was able to constantly study the moon and take lots of pictures and measurements.

One of the most exciting things that Chandrayaan did was to discover water on the moon! Yes, that's right, the moon has water, and that was a huge discovery for scientists.

Chandrayaan also discovered things like minerals and elements that are important for understanding the moon's geological history and formation.

So, that's the Chandrayaan programme in a nutshell, kiddo. It was a really important mission that helped us learn so much more about our little neighbour in the sky. And who knows, maybe one day you or your friends will become scientists and work on even cooler missions to explore space!