"This mission will provide a unique opportunity for frontier scientific research," ISRO said in a statement. "It is expected to be the forerunner of more ambitious planetary missions in the years to come, including landing robots on the moon and visits by Indian spacecraft to other planets in the solar system."

Chandrayan-1s aim, according to the study group that recommended the mission, is to obtain a chemical map of the entire lunar surface. The data from the mission will be used to create a 3-dimensional atlas of regions of interest using high-resolution remote sensing in the visible, near infrared, low and high-energy X-ray regions.

Observations using the X-ray spectrum and stereographic coverage of most of the moons surface at a ground resolution of 5 meters is designed to provide new insight in understanding lunar surface processes, according to ISRO. The areas selected for a focused study are the north and south polar regions (believed to contain ice) and the lunar South Poles Aitken basin -- an ancient crater impact area.

At the end of the mission ISRO expects to provide the scientific community an improved model of the moons gravity. This would be made possible with the highly accurate measurements of moons topography by a lunar laser ranging instrument and the digital elevation model derived from 3-D imageries obtained by the terrain mapping stereo camera.