Slashdot Mirror
Communication Lost With Indian Moon Satellite
stoolpigeon writes "All communication links with the only Indian satellite orbiting the Moon have been lost, India's space agency says. Radio contact with the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was lost abruptly early on Saturday, said India's Bangalore-based Space Research Organization (ISRO)."
Before this thread fills up completely with cynical wisecracking Americans, let me be the first to say, as a cynical wisecracking American, go India!
Seriously. You guys have a very solid set of rockets, a good broad focus (China's too focused on manned missions), and the technical skills to make it happen.
Also, I found it a little strange that the BBC article didn't mention this, but the Chandrayaan-1 had already been in successful operation for 312 days and had completed all of its primary mission goals. It had already collected plenty of scientific data, distributed to not just Indian scientists but also collaborators in Europe and the US. Of course, another year would be nice, but I'd consider the project a stunning success by just about any reasonable definition, especially since it was India's first ever lunar probe.
I look forward to India's Chandrayaan-2, which is planned to land a robotic rover on the Moon in 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1#Completion_of_primary_objectives
I am quoting from a local language news paper ( http://www.keralakaumudi.com/ ) from India:
Preliminary analysis shows that Chandrayan likely failed due to inadequate heat shielding (problem was radiated heat from the Moon) causing some of the instruments to fail (like Star Sensor). They raised the orbit to around 200km (from the initial 100km) to save the mission and it did not help much.
According to the report Chandrayan was successful in completing 95 percent of the mission objectives. The reports also said that they (ISRO) are going ahead with the next moon mission.