New Delhi, September 07: ISROThe Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has finally admitted that country’s first lunar mission Chandarayaan-1 was abruptly terminated due to a miscalculation of the Moon’s temperature at the orbit height from 100km to 200km.
The height was raised to get a better view of moon’s surface that led to faulty thermal protection and finally killed the mission.
Dr. T K Alex, Director, ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, said, “We assumed that the temperature at 100km above the Moon’s surface would be around 75 degrees Celsius. However, it was more than 75 degrees and problems started to surface. We had to raise the orbit to 200km.”
The space body revealed that a couple of star malfunctions were noted on April 26th and May 12th due to changing its height to closely observe orbit perturbations and gravitational field variation of the Moon.
However, the space agency is satisfied by the information provided by Chandrayaan terming it as a successful mission. ISRO got a large volume of data and 70,000 images of the moon which will be used to carry out further research.
—–Agencies