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Radio contact with India first lunar craft lost

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-08-29 20:20

NEW DELHI: The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said radio contact with India's first lunar craft, Chandrayaan-1, was abruptly lost early on Saturday.

Related readings:  India's first lunar probe lands, sends back images  India launches first unmanned moon mission

"The contact was lost at 1:30 am IST (Indian Standard Time) (2000 GMT Friday) as the deep space network (DSN) at Byalalu, about 40 km from Bangalore, received the data from the lunar craft during the previous orbit up to 00:25 am IST," said ISRO in a statement issued at its headquarters in Bangalore, southern India.

"The spacecraft has completed 312 days in orbit, making over 3,400 orbits around the moon and providing large volume of data from sophisticated sensors like terrain mapping camera, hyper-spectral imager, moon mineralogy mapper and so on, meeting most of the scientific objectives of the mission," the statement said.

It said space scientists are reviewing the telemetry data to analyze the health of the spacecraft's sub-systems.

Chandrayaan I was launched on Oct. 22, 2008 from Sriharikota space center, 90 km from Chennai, southern India, on board the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV).