India's Chandrayaan-1 enters lunar space
4/11/2008 15:36
India's first lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 entered the lunar space early
today for its final journey into the lunar orbit, an official of the Indian
Space Research Organization (ISRO) said.
"The operation to put Chandrayaan
into lunar space went off very well. The complex transition was carried out
early in the morning by firing the liquid apogee motor (LAM) on board for about
150 seconds to place the unmanned spacecraft 380,000 km away from earth (apogee)
and 1,000 km from the moon," ISRO director S. Satish said, according to the
Indo-Asian News Service.
Preparations for the next major transition will
begin soon to enable the spacecraft to enter the lunar orbit on Nov. 8 and
position itself about 100 km from the moon's surface.
Even as the spacecraft
gets ready for its rendezvous with the moon, its terrain-mapping camera (TMC)
will shoot pictures of the earth and moon orbiting in 380,000 km (apogee) by
1,000 km ( perigee).
"The images will be beamed to the space centre through
electrical signals for processing and developing into high resolution pictures
of one-five meters," Satish said.
All functions on board the satellite are
performing well and its health parameters are normal, he said.
The spacecraft
was launched on Oct. 22 by a polar satellite launch vehicle from the Satish
Dhawan space centre in south India.
Xinhua
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