M A I N   N E W S

Chandrayaan’s orbit further raised
Tribune News Service

Bangalore, October 25
The second orbit-raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was carried out at 5:48 am today by firing the spacecraft’s 440 Newton Liquid Engine for about 16 minutes from the spacecraft control centre (SCC) at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Peenya, Bangalore.

As a result of this operation, Chandrayaan-1’s apogee has been further raised to 74,715 km, while its perigee has been raised to 336 km. In this orbit, the spacecraft will take about 25-and-a-half hours to go round the earth once.

This is the first time an Indian spacecraft has gone beyond the 36,000 km high geostationary orbit and has reached an altitude more than twice that height. Further orbit raising manoeuvres to take Chandrayaan-1 to still higher orbits will be carried out in the next few days.

Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa today visited the Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu from where the movement of the aircraft is being monitored. During his visit, Yeddyurappa congratulated Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientists for the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1. He also honoured G. Madhavan Nair, chairman, ISRO, T.K. Alex, director, ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), V. Jayaraman, director, National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), George Koshy, mission director, PSLV-C11, M. Annadurai, project director, Chandrayaan-1, A. Bhaskaranarayana , scientific secretary, ISRO, P.S. Sastry, director, launch vehicle programme office (LVPO), S.K. Shivakumar, director, ISTRAC, S. Ramakrishnan, director (projects), Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), A.S. Kiran Kumar, deputy director, space applications centre (SAC), and C. Venugopal, vehicle director, PSLV-C11.