(Image coutesy: Pallava Bagla)

Dr. Manuel Grande is a lunar scientist from University of Wales Aberystwyth, United Kingdom, and is the principal investigator on the Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Imaging Spectrometer or the CIXS instrument.

It's going to make maps of the composition of specific elements the moon using x-rays and that's never been done on a global scale before and hopes to answer the question whether the earth and the moon formed from the same place in the solar system.

Pallava Bagla: Manuel, what are you flying on Chandrayaan and what will it do?
Manuel Grande: We are flying the CIXS or x-ray spectrometer and it will take or make maps of the moon in x-rays.

Pallava Bagla: And how does it differ from people who make maps on the earth using instruments?
Manuel Grande: Well, when you make maps with camera, maps in colours, what we are actually going to make maps of is, the elemental composition of the moon. So we have an instrument which straightaway will tell you how much magnesium, how much aluminum, how much iron, how much silicon, the things that rocks are made of. The things that we don't actually know .

Pallava Bagla: Why should we know what rocks are made of? Why should an average person in Britain or in India worry about why silicon is there or not?
Manuel Grande: No, I mean a big question. I don't know about you, I look up at the moon at night, and when I see it

Pallava Bagla: Well I also look at the moon sometimes
Manuel Grande: It still worries me that we don't know if the earth and the moon were made at the same place. And in order to answer that question you have to ask the question, are they made of similar things and are the things they are made of compatible with what we believe to be true, which is a single origin.

Pallava Bagla: Oh, so your instrument is really going to solve the mystery of the origin of the earth and moon together?
Manuel Grande: Yes, it is certainly what we hope. We hope that if we can measure the absolute elemental abundances accurately enough, then that will make it possible to say whether particular models, for example, the giant impact model, are true or false.

Pallava Bagla: Oh so you are hoping to solve that big mystery of
Manuel Grande: Well, as you know with the Apollo mission they thought they had solved that, but the more detail they go into, the harder it is to make the original theory work. But of course the thing with the Apollo mission is that they only sampled some specific places, the dark bits when you look up at night. Those are not typical places of the moon. And so what we are going to sample remotely, by looking from a distance, for all this is the whole composition of the moon. And that has never actually been done in the certainly never in the elements that the moon is made of. Aluminum, silicon, the things that rocks, and the moon is a rocky planet, are made of.

Pallava Bagla: And are you looking for helium 3 by any chance or not?
Manuel Grande:We cannot

Pallava Bagla: You are not looking for that magic element helium 3?
Manuel Grande: We cannot see helium and we cannot see water at the poles either, because we rely on the sun shining on the moon. And then the moon fluoresces the x-rays and by the colour of the x-rays, by the colours of fluoresces we can tell what the moon is made of. So at any one moment we can only look at the sunlit side.

Pallava Bagla: So why are you flying it on an Indian aircraft?
Manuel Grande: Well, because it is the best mission around. It's very simple. We flew a test flight on the European SMART-1 mission. We proved the technique works. It is now getting ready to produce results. And the Indian mission is just a fantastic opportunity to do that. It's a perfect orbit, it is good timing; it is very important for an x-ray spectrometer that it flies when the sun is active. And the sun is just becoming active now. For example the SMART-1 mission was when the sun was inactive, solar minimum, Chandrayaan will take place at solar maximum.

Pallava Bagla: Why didn't you fly it with the Japanese or the Chinese?
Manuel Grande: Well, we are partners with the Japanese, we know them very well..

Pallava Bagla: No, but you don't have an instrument on them, but you have an instrument in India, Indian aircraft..
Manuel Grande: Oh, that's easy, the Japanese had already started their instruments, in fact before we started ours. We've talked a lot to one, members of the Japanese team, but the

Pallava Bagla: Did they invite you?
Manuel Grande: Yes.

Pallava Bagla: Did you, why did you fly it on them?
Manuel Grande: No, sorry, they invited me to be a part of their team. No they already had an instrument which they had flown to an asteroid in fact. So they wanted to fly the same instrument again. In fact it has worked out very well for us because SELENE is flying at solar minimum and so they have a very, rather weaker x-ray signal. We will have a very nice x-ray signal with Chandrayaan.

Pallava Bagla: And what about the Chinese? Did you attempt flying with them?
Manuel Grande: No, we talked to them and we felt their instrument is, they have an x-ray instrument

Pallava Bagla: But were they looking they didn't give you a place on the instrument, on the..
Manuel Grande: No..

Pallava Bagla: No? why?
Manuel Grande: They wanted to do their own I suppose, though their own x-ray instrument is very very simple..

Pallava Bagla: Okay, so you could have as well flown on the Chinese mission but you chose to fly it on India, because Indians invited you?
Manuel Grande: We've been discussing with the Indians for a long time actually so, you know, we've been friends with the Indians ever since, ten years we've been talking about doing this, so India has always been our first choice for this.