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Chandrayaan Enters Lunar Orbit

Posted by Soulskill on from the fly-me-to-the-moon dept.

William Robinson writes "After an 18-day journey, Chandrayaan-1, the moon mission of India, has entered Lunar orbit. The maneuver was described as crucial and critical by scientists, who pointed out that at least 30 per cent of similar moon missions had failed at this juncture, resulting in spacecraft lost to outer space. The lunar orbit insertion placed Chandrayaan-1 in an elliptical orbit with its nearest point 400 to 500 kilometers away from the moon, and the farthest, 7,500 kilometers. By November 15, the spacecraft is expected to be orbiting the moon at a distance of 100 kilometers and sending back data and images (the camera was tested with shots looking back at Earth). The Chandrayaan-1 is also scheduled to send a probe to the moon's surface."

9 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. My other car is a Porsche... on the MOON by Dachannien · · Score: 4, Funny

    Too bad the Moon's just one big tourist trap now.

  2. Moon Impact Probe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the linked article: "The spacecraft will make observations from the initial orbit, and then the orbit will be lowered a 100 km circular polar orbit. Following this, the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) will be ejected, impacting the lunar surface."

    I going to give my car a new name... Instead of "the old Honda Civic", I'm going to call it the "Car Impact Probe" ...that way I can justify all of my accidents as being for science's sake.

    1. Re:Moon Impact Probe by Belial6 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Unfortunately, that means that your insurance will not cover them as the vehicle functioned as intended.

  3. Re:Does it too smell of curry? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is Sweeden third world too with all their socialism?

    of course not, socialism puts the "wee!!!" in Sweeden

  4. Awesome by rarel · · Score: 4, Funny

    The scientific community will certainly not stay hindi-fferent to this expansion of India's science curry-culum!

    1. Re:Awesome by grcumb · · Score: 5, Funny

      The scientific community will certainly not stay hindi-fferent to this expansion of India's science curry-culum!

      That's sikh. Trying to curry favour with the mods using such blatant pun jabs. I hope they're having nan of that.

      --
      Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
  5. Re:Awesome! by HermDog · · Score: 2, Funny

    It would be really cool if they could send back a nice high res picture of one of the old Apollo missions - just to kill of the conspiracy theories once and for all. Although the theorists would no doubt immediately claim them as fakes...

    There's a simple solution to that. Somebody's got to take pictures of Chandrayaan, and somebody else needs to take pictures of the somebody taking pictures of Chandrayaan, and so on, and so forth, ad nauseum ad infinitum. Looks like a job for elephants all the way down!

    --
    JADBP
  6. Re:Nobody is starving in the US by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2, Funny

    Except people do still starve to death, only it is the socially ignored old man who sleeps in the park because he is too proud to go to a shelter. This demographic often freezes to death.

    Pick one or the other, AC, but not both: if they freeze to death, they can't have starved to death.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  7. Pictures of US stuff by gr8_phk · · Score: 2, Funny

    Great, so now if anyone can get a picture of the US landing site we can put that whole conspiracy theory to rest.