Chandrayaan sends first photos of earth’s surface

Analysis of the pictures at the ISRO centres showed that the camera was performing just as expected. The pictures were shown to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair called on him on Friday to brief him on the successful launch of Chandrayaan, a Government statement said. Nair also told the Prime Minister about the launch sequence and subsequent operations performed on the spacecraft to push it progressively into higher orbits. He informed the Prime Minister that so far everything had gone as per the plan. He presented a model of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C-11, which put the spacecraft into space, and also Chandrayaan-I to the PM who congratulated ISRO and the Chandrayaan team on successfully achieving a major milestone in India’s space programme.

Now, Chandrayaan-I is orbiting around the earth in an elliptical path in which it will go to a maximum distance of 267,000 km from the earth. It will take six days for Chandrayaan-I to go around the earth once in this orbit.