NEW DELHI: India’s $80-million moon mission suffered a serious blow on Saturday as ground station lost radio contact with the lunar craft.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) abruptly lost contact with the unmanned spacecraft at around 0130am local time (2000 GMT) on Friday. Data was last received from spacecraft shortly after midnight on Saturday.
“The mission is definitely over. We have lost contact with the spacecraft,” Project Director of the Chandrayaan-1 mission M Annadurai told reporters. He, however, claimed the mission had “technically completed its job 100 percent and scientifically... almost 90-95 percent”. S Satish, public relations director of ISRO, earlier told TV channels that scientists were unable to determine what was happening to Chandrayaan-1. “We are not able to establish communication with the spacecraft – that is what we mean by loss of radio link. It is some sort of serious problem,” said Satish.
Job done: An ISRO press release, issued in Bangalore, said the spacecraft had fulfilled most of its scientific objectives. “The spacecraft has completed 312 days in orbit, making over 3,400 orbits around the moon and providing large volume of data from sophisticated sensors like terrain-mapping camera, hyper-spectral imager, moon-mineralogy mapper and so on, meeting most of the scientific objectives of the mission,” the statement said.
In February 2009, a “prime sensor” of the spacecraft developed a snag. The device enables scientists to determine altitude and its failure forced ISRO to push the spacecraft’s orbit from 100km to 200km from the moon’s surface. The change in orbit meant lower quality data.
Chandrayaan-1 was launched in October 2008 to map a three-dimensional atlas of the moon the chemical and mineral composition of its surface. India plans to send an astronaut into space by 2014 and a manned mission to the moon by 2020.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) abruptly lost contact with the unmanned spacecraft at around 0130am local time (2000 GMT) on Friday. Data was last received from spacecraft shortly after midnight on Saturday.
“The mission is definitely over. We have lost contact with the spacecraft,” Project Director of the Chandrayaan-1 mission M Annadurai told reporters. He, however, claimed the mission had “technically completed its job 100 percent and scientifically... almost 90-95 percent”. S Satish, public relations director of ISRO, earlier told TV channels that scientists were unable to determine what was happening to Chandrayaan-1. “We are not able to establish communication with the spacecraft – that is what we mean by loss of radio link. It is some sort of serious problem,” said Satish.
Job done: An ISRO press release, issued in Bangalore, said the spacecraft had fulfilled most of its scientific objectives. “The spacecraft has completed 312 days in orbit, making over 3,400 orbits around the moon and providing large volume of data from sophisticated sensors like terrain-mapping camera, hyper-spectral imager, moon-mineralogy mapper and so on, meeting most of the scientific objectives of the mission,” the statement said.
In February 2009, a “prime sensor” of the spacecraft developed a snag. The device enables scientists to determine altitude and its failure forced ISRO to push the spacecraft’s orbit from 100km to 200km from the moon’s surface. The change in orbit meant lower quality data.
Chandrayaan-1 was launched in October 2008 to map a three-dimensional atlas of the moon the chemical and mineral composition of its surface. India plans to send an astronaut into space by 2014 and a manned mission to the moon by 2020.
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