Massive Moon Replica At IIT's Science Festival Wins Praise From ISRO Chief

A beautiful replica of the moon is proving to be a crowd-puller at the ongoing India International Science Festival at IIT, Guwahati.

The installation, with a diameter of seven meters, been conceived by British artist Mr Luke Jerram and has been made using images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) flown to the moon by NASA.

The moon's images are printed on the inflatable balloon and each centimetre represents about five kilometers of the lunar surface. The rendition, titled "The Museum Of Moon", is so good that the mountains and craters of the moon seem to have come alive on the IIT campus.

ISRO chairman Dr S Somanath praised the Moon exhibit, adding that the space agency would look at collaborating with an artist to create a similar model. He added that India has the best images of the lunar surface and has been supplying them to whoever is asking for them. "The world's space agencies are using them for landing on the Moon," he said.

Credit: Pallava Bagla

The Shiv Shakti point, where India's Vikram Lander touched down as part of Chandrayaan 3 mission earlier this year, is not marked on the installation. However, one can visualise on the installation how India created history by becoming the first country to land near the unexplored south pole of the Moon. 

Incidentally, global experts acknowledge and use the Moon's images taken by the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter, which gave never-seen-before high resolution imagery of the lunar surface. India is planning the follow-up mission Chandrayaan 4, which will attempt to bring back samples of the moon from near the Shiv Shakti point. 

The India International Science Festival has been supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology and pivoted by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in collaboration with VIBHA or Vigyan Bharati and about 8,000 delegates are expected to participate in the annual science festival.