“The second orbit-raising manoeuver of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was carried out at 05:48 hrs IST this morning (October 25, 2008) when the spacecraft’s 440 Newton Liquid Engine was fired for about 16 minutes by commanding the spacecraft from Spacecraft Control Centre,” an ISRO statement said. “This is the first time an Indian spacecraft has gone beyond the 36,000 km high geo-stationary orbit and reached an altitude twice that height. In this orbit Chandrayaan 1 takes about 25 hours and 30 minutes to go round the earth once,” ISRO officials said. ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair has called it a ‘record breaking’ day for the mission.

Chandrayaan 1’s initial launch by the PSLV-XL launch vehicle on October 22 placed it in an elliptical orbit around the earth with a perigee (closest point to earth) of 255 km and an apogee (farthest point from earth) of 22,860 km. To reach the moon the spacecraft has to cover a total distance of 3,86,000 km and it is expected to settle into a lunar orbit, 100 km from the Moon on November 8.

“When you go further and further, the earth’s influence comes down. The influence of the Moon and Sun becomes predominant. Even other planets will have an influence on it,” Nair said. ISRO has reported good conditions for all systems on board Chandrayaan-1.

What an achievement

• The second orbit-raising manoeuvre was performed at 5.48 am on Saturday. This has taken Chandrayaan-I into an elliptical orbit whose furthest point from earth (apogee) is 74,715 km and nearest point (perigee) is 336 km

• In this orbit, Chandrayaan-I will take 251/2 half hours to go round the earth. This is the first time that an Indian spacecraft has this far in space.

• The maximum that any Indian vehicle had gone before this was the 36,000-km geostationary orbit in which a number of Indian satellites are lined up