Finally Chandrayaan in lunar Orbit

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India on Saturday successfully put its first unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-I into lunar orbit - a major step towards placing it in its designated slot 100 km from the moon.

“The spacecraft was placed in an elliptical orbit - at 7,500 km aposelene (farthest from moon) and 500 km periselene (nearest to moon) through complex manoeuvres,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S Satish said.

“The liquid apogee motor (LAM) onboard was fired for 805 seconds (13.4 minutes) between 5 pm (IST) and 5.15 pm (IST) to put the spacecraft into the elliptical orbit around the moon," Satish added.

In this orbit, the spacecraft takes 10 hours to complete one revolution around the moon.

Over the next two-three days, Chandrayaan will be progressively lowered to an orbit that will be 500 km aposelene and 100 km periselene.

“The spacecraft will be gently pushed to its designated slot in the lunar orbit and positioned at a distance 100 km from the surface of the moon,” Satish said.

The complex manoeuvres were executed by ISRO’s telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) on the outskirts of Bangalore and monitored by its deep space network (DSN) at Byalalu, about 40 km from Bangalore.

“The health of the spacecraft is good and its vital functions are operating normally,” Satish added.

The terrain mapping camera onboard will continue to take pictures of the moon’s surface even as it revolves around its polar orbit.

Chandrayaan carries 11 scientific instruments, including six foreign payloads - two from the US, three from the European Space Agency (ESA) and one from Bulgaria. The remaining five are indigenously designed and developed by various centres of the state-run ISRO.

The spacecraft was blasted off Oct 22 onboard the 316-tonne Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C11) from the Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota spaceport, about 80 km north of Chennai.

Chandrayaan -1

A rocket carrying India's first lunar spacecraft was launched from the country's spaceport here early Wednesday, catapulting the country into the select club that have sent missions to the moon, after the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan.
Carrying aloft the lunar orbiter Chandrayaan, the rocket, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV C11) lifted off from the second launchpad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here and broke through the scudding cloud cover at 6.22 a.m., exactly on schedule.
Trailing its characteristic orange plume, the 44-metre-tall 316-tonne PSLV started to move into its designated orbit within minutes, to sling Chandrayaan into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), as scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) cheered at this spaceport off the Andhra Pradesh coast, 80 km north of Chennai.
From the GTO the satellite's onboard liquid apogee motor (LAM) will be fired to take it to the lunar orbit - 387,000 km from earth - around Nov 8.
Once the 1,380-kg Chandrayaan gets near the moon its speed will be reduced to enable the gravity of the moon to capture it into an elliptical orbit.
At the earliest possible opportunity Chandrayaan will drop its Moon Impact Probe (MIP) which will land on the moon's soil carrying India's flag, among many scientific instruments. After that, the spacecraft will also activate its cameras and other instruments on board.
Chandrayaan will orbit the moon for two years. It carries 11 experimental payloads, five Indian and six from the European Space Agency (3), the US (2) and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1).
At liftoff, PSLV C11 weighed 22 tonnes more than earlier PSLV models, as its six strap-on motors were 3.5 metres bigger at 13.5 metre and the rocket carried 12 tonnes of solid propellant as against the usual 9 tonnes.
'The vehicle structure was altered to have bigger strap-on motors. The rocket is also padded up with additional thermal insulation,' George Koshy, project director

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