After the successful completion of all the major mission objectives, the orbit of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, which was at a height of 100 km from the lunar surface since November 2008, has now been raised to 200 km. The orbit raising manoeuvres were carried out between 0900 and 1000 hrs IST on May 19, 2009. The spacecraft in this higher altitude will enable further studies on orbit perturbations, gravitational field variation of the Moon and also enable imaging lunar surface with a wider swath.
It may be recalled that Chandryaan-1 spacecraft launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota on October 22, 2008 by PSLV-C11, was inserted into lunar orbit on November 8, 2008. Over the last seven months, all the 11 payloads onboard Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft have been operationalised successfully and excellent quality data has been received. The scientific community from India and other participating international agencies are analysing the data and already several interesting results have been obtained.
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft operations are being carried out from the Satellite Control Centre (SCC) of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Bangalore and Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu near Bangalore. The science data from Chandrayaan-1 is being archived and disseminated from Indian Space Science Data Centre (ISSDC), also located at Byalalu.
