Manueuver Puts Chandrayaan in Deep Space

By Nancy Atkinson - October 26, 2008 at 11:17 AM UTC | Planetary Science
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After a successful maneuver early today (October 26, 2008), the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has crossed the 150,000 km distance mark from Earth, officially entering

deep space

, on course for the moon. This was the third orbit raising maneuver of the mission. The spacecraft's 440 Newton liquid engine was fired for about nine and a half minutes, beginning at 07:08 IST. With this, Chandrayaan-1 entered a much higher elliptical orbit around the Earth. The apogee (farthest point from Earth) of this orbit lies at 164,600 km while the perigee (nearest point from Earth) is at 348 km. In this orbit, Chandrayaan-1 takes about 73 hours to go round the Earth once.

To compare, Chandrayaan's initial orbit had a perigee of 255 km and an apogee of 22,860 km, with about a 6.5-hour period. After the second boost from its engines, Chandrayaan raised its apogee to 37,900 kilometers, and increased its orbit period to 11 hours.

Engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are also providing backup navigation assistance to the Indian Space Agency in Bangalore, India, by helping to track the flight dynamics. The antennas of the Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu are being used for tracking and communicating with Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in its high orbit. From the image below, you can see how additional orbit raising maneuvers in the next few days will take Chandrayaan-1 towards the Moon, and then into lunar orbit. Currently, the spacecraft is scheduled to reach lunar orbit on November 8. [caption id="attachment_20112" align="alignnone" width="580" caption="Chandrayaan mission profile. Credit: ISRO"]

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Source: ISRO

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com