Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity Studies on Chandrayaan-2 Lander

Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity Studies (ILSA) is a science payload with the objective of studying seismic activities at the landing site of Vikram, the Lander of Chandrayaan-2. ILSA will be deployed to the lunar surface by a specially built mechanism. It is an indigenously developed instrument based on microelectro mechanical systems technology. High sensitivity silicon micro-machined accelerometer is the heart of the instrument that measures ground acceleration due to lunar quakes. The instrument has the capability of resolving acceleration better than 100 nano-g Hz^–1/2 up to a range of 0.5 g over bandwidth of 40 Hz. This paper presents the basic concepts in the design, realization, characterization and the performance test results of the space qualified strong motion seismic sensors.