Chandrayaan-1 is almost ready to be put in final orbit

By Khabrein.Info Correspondent,

Bengaluru, Nov. 12: First moon mission of India, the unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 is almost ready to be put in final orbit. The premier space agency Indian Space Research Oorganization (ISRO) is going gaga over the fact that in its first attempt it has done what was unthinkable from a third world country like India.

In the meantime there are malicious efforts on the part of Chinese news websites and some members of elite space club to play down the importance of the feat achieved by India.

India has become the sixth country after US, Russia, China, France and Japan to have successfully send a spacecraft to orbit moon.

One website went to the extent of claiming that Indian space organization ISRO had lost track of Chandrayaan-1 and that the space craft had become uncontrollable.

It is another matter that later it retracted its claim and said that it may not track the spacecraft that has crossed the earth orbit.

On the other hand ISRO is going gaga over the successful repeated maneuvering of the Chandrayaan and its success in putting the spacecraft into moon orbit.

The first orbit reduction manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 has been successfully completed, taking the spacecraft as near as 200 km to the moon, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).

As part of the manoeuvre which began at 8.09 pm on Sunday, the 440-newton liquid engine of the spacecraft was fired for about 57 seconds, a statement by the Isro said.

With this, the nearest point of Chandrayaan-1’s orbit (periselene) from the moon’s surface was reduced from 504 km to 200 km while the farthest point (aposelene) remained unchanged at 7,502 km, the statement said. In this orbit, Chandrayaan-1 takes about 10-and-half hours to circle the moon once.

The lunar orbit insertion manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 was successfully performed on Saturday, and the spacecraft entered the orbit around the moon with a periselene of 504 km and an aposelene of 7,502 kms.

The health as well as the orbit of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is being closely monitored from the spacecraft control centre of Isro Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (Istrac) in Bengaluru with crucial support from the Indian Deep Space Network antennas at Byalalu. The spacecraft performance is normal.