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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.
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