The Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft, India’s first unmanned mission to the Moon, is seen as it is unveiled at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Satellite Center in Bangalore. Scientists at India’s national space agency said Saturday that all communication links with the country’s only satellite orbiting the moon have snapped and they were unable to send commands to the spacecraft. Radio contact with Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was abruptly lost.
India’s first moon mission Chandrayaan-I, came to an abrupt end early on Saturday, as the spacecraft lost the radio link with earth at 0130 hours
ISRO’s Deep Space Network near Bangalore received the data from the spacecraft up to 0025 hours after which it lost contact with earth. The spacecraft was launched in the moon’s orbit from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre Sriharikota on October 22, 2008.
“We have lost contact with the spacecraft and the mission is over,” Project Director of the Chandrayaan-1 mission M Annadurai said. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) however claimed that the moon mission had achieved most of its objectives.
“Chandrayaan-1 has done its job technically about 100%. Scientifically, it has done almost 90-95% of its job,”Mr Annadurai added.
The spacecraft had completed 312 days in orbit making more than 3400 orbits around the Moon. “Chandrayaan I provided large volume of data from sophisticated sensors like terrain mapping camera, hyper-spectral imager, moon mineralogy mapper etc, meeting most of the scientific objectives of the mission,” ISRO said in a statement on Saturday.
Last month, ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair had said that the organisation was thinking of aborting the mission in 4-5 months, even as the 1,380 kg spaceracft developed a snag in its sensor. Chandrayaan-1 carried 11 instruments on board, including six from overseas.
The Chandrayaan-1 mission was launched with a budget of $86 mn, almost half the cost of China’s Chang’e 1 mission ($187 mn) and just about a fifth of Japan’s Kayuga ($480 mn). India is now planning to launch a second moon mission – Chandryaan II, for which the design has already been completed.
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