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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."

3 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Nice summary of the mission... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    The ISRO site has a page on how the orbits look like in the Mission Sequence page.

    And to anybody still complaining about India spending money on its space mission when 500 million people are in poverty, you are not the first.

  2. three lunar orbiters .. all asian by savuporo · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are currently three spacecraft orbiting the moon. Japanese Kayuga/Selene, Chinese Chang'e and now Chandrayaan. Approximate budgets:

    # Chandrayaan-I (India) - $86m
    # Chang'e (China) - $187m
    # Kayuga (Japan) - $480m

    NASA is about to follow up with its own, mid-2009
    # LRO - around half a billion ?

    China and Japan have announced followup lander missions as well, and there is Google Lunar X-Prize card too, so the next lunar landing will be likely be done by one of these parties ( The last one was by USSR, back in 1976 )

    Moon, while basically neglected for past few decades ( with notable exceptions of ESA Smart-1 and american low-budget Clementine and Lunar Prospector ), is about to get quite crowded.

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  3. Re:Fascinating photos by mritunjai · · Score: 4, Informative

    The size of the craft, at over 1300 kg, is a big honking'* thing.

    Yes!, it is, and for a reason. It's carrying the largest number of payloads ever carried by a lunar mission - 11.

    5 (TMC, HySI, LLRI, HEX, MIP) - ISRO
    2 (C1XS, SARA) - ESA + ISRO
    1 (SIR-2) - Max Planck, Germany
    1 (RADOM) - Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
    1 (Mini-SAR) - NASA
    1 (M3) - Brown University & JPL

    More info here on ISRO page.
    So it's kinda an international mission :-)

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    - mritunjai