Mission accomplished! Chandrayaan enters Moon orbit
CNN-IBN
Published on Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 22:33, Updated on Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 22:44 in Sci-Tech section
New Delhi: India's first voyage to moon is now complete as Chandrayaan-I, India's unmanned lunar spacecraft, has successfully lowered into its final orbit.
It is about 100 kilometres from the moon.
It'll be positioned for the next two years in this orbit while experiments will be conducted to get more information about the moon's surface.
ISRO officials say they plan to drop the moon impact probe bearing a painting of the tricolour by late night on Friday.
After that, all equipment such as the laser instruments and high-resolution cameras will be switched on one by one everyday.
ISRO has carried out three orbit-lowering moves since the spacecraft entered the lunar orbit on Saturday.
Chandrayaan was launched on October 22 and propelled on its 4,00,000-km voyage to the moon in a number of stages.
Its orbit was raised progressively towards the moon by activating its liquid motor.
Mission Chandrayaan has become a matter of national pride and a measure of success for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
ISRO has stated that the purpose of Chandrayaan launch is to expand the scientific knowledge about the moon, upgrade India's technological capability and provide challenging opportunities to the younger generation for planetary research.
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