Archive for August 30th, 2009
we lost Chandrayaan-1!! India’s spacecraft
August 30th, 2009
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) gave a statement about this issue yesterday which revealed the news about the lost contact of the Chandrayaan 1. As per the news the the ISRO lost the radio contact from Chandrayaan 1 due to some malfunctioning of the spacecraft.
PTI quoted Chandrayaan-1 mission director M Annadurai as saying that the mission “is definitely over.” India’s first sojourn to its closest celestial neighbor, located about 4-lakh km away, was supposed to last for two years but has apparently ended in less than half that time. ISRO insists that technically the truncated mission has been a complete success and that it has met “most of the scientific objectives.”
Detlef Koshcny, European Space Agency’s project scientist for Chandrayaan-1, said that the instrument was not able to get the images of X-ray flares from the sun because solar activity was very low. The spacecraft would have to be in orbit for much longer than it has for the X-ray camera’s capture mission objectives to have met ..That was sad ..
ISRO also admitted that a vital instrument in the spacecraft has failed last month and the ‘ star’ sensor also failed few weeks back which showed the symptoms of end of the spacecraft.
One of the Main objectives of this lunar mission is to identify deposits of mineral helium-3 which is Believed to be abundant on the moon, the non-radioactive helium-3 is regarded as having the potential to power future nuclear fusion reactors for more than hundred years.
Tags: Chandrayaan-1, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, Detlef Koshcny, Indian Space Research Organisation, isro, star sensor, X-ray flares
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