BANGALORE ( TOI): India on Saturday successfully put its first unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-I into lunar orbit - a major step towards placing it in its
designated slot 100 km from the moon, a top Indian space agency official said.
The spacecraft was placed in an elliptical orbit - at 7,500 km aposelene (farthest from moon) and 500 km periselene (nearest to moon) through complex manoeuvres, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish said.
In this orbit, the spacecraft takes 10 hours to complete one revolution around the moon.
Over the next two-three days, Chandrayaan will be progressively lowered to an orbit that will be 500 km aposelene and 100 km periselene.
Chandrayaan carries 11 scientific instruments, including six foreign payloads - two from the US, three from the European Space Agency (ESA) and one from Bulgaria. The remaining five are indigenously designed and developed by various centres of the state-run ISRO.
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