The Hindu Business Line : Lunar craft one step away from Moon

The one-week-old Indian lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 is now in an orbit almost 70 per cent from its scheduled slot near Moon. It now orbits Earth elliptically at 2.67 lakh km distance from one side.

“One more orbit raising manoeuvre is scheduled to send the spacecraft to the vicinity of Moon at a distance of about 3.84 lakh km from the Earth,” an ISRO release said.

The fifth orbit-raising is to be taken up on November 3. Once it nears Moon, some more manoeuvres will be made to slot it to go round Moon, possibly around mid-November. The lunar craft is then slated to drop a Moon Impact Probe carrying the Indian Tricolour on the lunar surface.

In the fourth manoeuvre on Wednesday morning, scientists of the Spacecraft Control Centre at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking & Command Network in Bangalore raised the orbit to 2.67 lakh km by firing the onboard engine for three minutes.

Chandrayaan-1 has entered into an even more elliptical orbit, more than half way to Moon, with an apogee (farthest point from Earth) at 2.67 lakh km and a perigee (nearest point to Earth) at 465 km. It has to finally be moved to a final slot 100 km from the Moon, which is 3.87 lakh km away from Earth. In this orbit, the lunar craft takes about six days to go round the Earth once.

The SCC is monitoring the health of the spacecraft continuously with support from the Indian Deep Space Network antennae at nearby Byalalu. All systems onboard are performing normally, the release said.

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