Radio Contact Lost With Chandrayaan-1

By Nancy Atkinson - August 29, 2009 at 5:27 AM UTC | Missions
chyaan1-2_l.jpg

[/caption] India's lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 lost contact with ISRO's ground station early on August 29. "We are not able to establish contact with the spacecraft. We are not getting the data, we are not able to send commands," an ISRO official told the

Press Trust of India.

"In simple terms, the spacecraft has become dumb. It can't speak." The 11 scientific payloads onboard the orbiter had been operating normally, and the spacecraft was sending data during a planned sequence to its ground station when contact was lost. Officials are now analyzing data obtained, hoping to find any indications of what could have happened.

Chandrayaan 1 and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter teamed up on August 20 to perform a bi-static radar experiment, and although no results have been released yet, the data had been successfully returned from the test.

Chandrayaan-1 was launched October 22, 2008, reaching the moon in early November. It has made over 3,000 orbits and its high-resolution cameras relayed over 70,000 digital images of the lunar surface, providing breathtaking views of mountains and craters, including those in the permanently shadowed area of the moon's polar region.

The

Times Now

website is reporting that the mission is over, with a quote from Project Director of the Chandrayaan-1 mission, M Annadurai: "The mission is definitely over. We have lost contact with the spacecraft."

He added "It has done its job technically...100 per cent. Scientifically also, it has done almost 90-95 percent of its job."

But as of this writing it has only been about 18 hours since contact was lost. We'll keep you posted on further news on Chandrayaan-1

Sources:

PTI

,

Times Now

Hat tip to Svetoslav Alexandrov

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