Chandrayaan-1 in lunar transfer trajectory

Continuing with its journey towards the moon, India’s Chandrayaan – 1 has entered lunar space in its final leg.
Today (November 4) Chandrayaan 1 entered the lunar transfer trajectory.

What this really means is that the Chandrayaan 1 is now in orbit around Earth still, but it is an orbit that takes it farthest from the Earth so far – and closest to the lunar orbit. Right now, the Chandrayaan-1′s orbit takes it 380,000 kilometers from Earth at its farthest.

The next step is lunar orbit insertion. This is when the Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft would be inserted into the lunar orbit through complex manoeuvres from the space control centre of ISRO.

So to clarify it once again, Chandryaan 1 is now on lunar transfer trajectory – not lunar orbit. That is the next step.

Lunar transfer trajectory insertion was carried out around 5 a.m on Tueday by firing the liquid apogee motor (LAM) on board for about 150 seconds to place the unmanned spacecraft 380,000 km away from earth (apogee) and 1,000 km from the moon, said ISRO director S Satish. Lunar orbit insertion is when Chandrayaan 1 would be made to leave the Earth orbit and move into orbit around the moon.

The spacecraft was successfully launched on October 22 on board a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

Chandrayaan-1, while continuing with its journey to the moon’s surface, woul also shoot pictures of the earth and moon with the help of the terrain-mapping camera (TMC) on board. This will be done while it is orbiting in 380,000 km (apogee) by 1,000 km (perigee). Satish said that the pictures taken by the TMC will then be beamed to the space centre in India through electrical signals for processing and developing into high resolution pictures of one-five metres.

Chandrayaan 1 has on board, besides the  TMC, has as many as 11 scientific instruments. They include six foreign payloads, of which two from the US, three from the European Space Agency (ESA) and one from Bulgaria. The other five have been indigenously designed and developed by various ISRO centres in India.

The ISRO official also said that the spacecraft has been functioning well. Signals from ISRO’s deep space network at Byalalu, near Bangalore  are being able to be sent and received without any hassle.