The Hindu Business Line : Chandrayaan-1 loses radio contact with ISRO

“Radio contact with Chandrayaan-I spacecraft was abruptly lost at 1.30 a.m. (IST) on August 29, 2009. The Deep Space Network at Byalalu near Bangalore received data from [it] during the previous orbit up to 12.25 a.m. (IST),” the agency said in a short statement.

Senior officials connected with the Rs 380-crore lunar orbiter mission were not immediately available to say what had gone wrong. The statement said telemetry data received from the spacecraft were being reviewed and the health of the spacecraft subsystems was being assessed.

Mr S. Satish, Director, Publicity and Public Relations, said: “We are able to neither send commands nor receive any data from the spacecraft.” He said the spacecraft did not show any recent sign of deterioration.

Asked if this was the end of the mission and about the fate of the spacecraft, he said: “As we have lost contact with the spacecraft, we do not know what has happened to it.”

The timing of the announcement of Chandrayaan-1 is ironical. ISRO, along with the Astronautical Society of India, is hosting a five-day international conference on low-cost planetary mission in Goa, where 40 overseas participants are expected. ISRO’s Chairman and Secretary of the Department of Space, Mr G. Madhavan Nair, is also the President of ASI.

EARLY PROBLEMS

Chandrayaan-I was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, on October 22, 2008. It was built for a life of two years and was to circle Moon pole to pole from a distance of 100 km to map its surface and look for water and vital minerals. The first signs of trouble started showing within months, although ISRO acknowledged it only three months later.

On May 19, ISRO doubled the orbiting distance to 200 km, explaining that this was to save the instruments from the intense heat of radiation from Moon’s surface. Again, on July 17, Mr Nair told newspersons that the two onboard star-tracking sensors had failed in April and the lunar craft was facing an orientation problem.

It had been stabilised by an alternative mode with gyroscopes. This did not mean the craft was crippled or dying, he said.

Mr Nair had also said all other instruments were functioning well but there was concern about the High Energy X-ray Spectrometer or HEX, which may have been hit by radiation. HEX is meant to detect water, uranium and thorium. “A complex mission like this can encounter unexpected problems,” was the refrain of senior officials.

On the plus side, it had achieved most of the scientific objectives, including dropping the Tricolour on to lunar surface on November 14 last and the 3D lunar surface mapping, he had said.

Until Saturday, the spacecraft completed 312 days in orbit, made over 3,400 orbits around Moon and provided a large volume of data.

It carried 11 sophisticated sensors from ISRO and five agencies – including the Terrain Mapping Camera, Hyper-spectral Imager and the Moon Mineralogy Mapper. ISRO has at least one more lunar mission in the pipeline for 2012-13 and has teamed up with Russia for Chandrayaan-2.

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