Friday, October 31, 2008

Chandrayaan-1’s Orbit Closer to Moon


The fourth orbit raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was carried out today (October 29, 2008) morning at 07:38 am IST. During this manoeuvre, the spacecraft’s 440 Newton liquid engine was fired for about three minutes. With this, Chandrayaan-1 entered into a more elliptical orbit whose apogee (farthest point to Earth) lies at 267,000 km (two lakh sixty seven thousand km) while the perigee (nearest point to Earth) lies at 465 km. Thus, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft’s present orbit extends more than half the way to moon. In this orbit, the spacecraft takes about six days to go round the Earth once.
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