The Indian flag is all set to mark its presence on the lunar surface for the first time on Friday as a moon probe with the tri-colour painted on it will detach from Chandrayaan-1 and descend onto the earth's natural satellite.

"The Moon Impact Probe is expected to be detached (from Chandrayaan-1) at around 10 pm on Friday," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spokesperson S Satish said.

Miniature Indian flags are painted on four sides of MIP. "It will signify the entry of India on Moon," Satish said.

"During its 20-minute descend to the moon's surface, MIP will take pictures and transmit these back to the ground," he said.

MIP is one of the 11 scientific instruments (payloads) onboard Chandrayaan-1, India's first unmanned spacecraft mission to moon launched on October 22.

The spacecraft on Thursday reached its final orbital home, about 100 kms over the moon surface after ISRO scientists successfully carried out the last critical orbit lowering operation.

Developed by ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre of Thiruvananthapuram, the primary objective of MIP is to demonstrate the technologies required for landing a probe at the desired location on the moon.

The probe will help qualify some of the technologies related to future soft landing missions. This apart, scientific exploration of the moon at close distance is also intended using MIP.

The 29-kg MIP consists of a C-band Radar Altimeter for continuous measurement of altitude of the probe, a video imaging system for acquiring images of the surface of moon from the descending probe and a mass spectrometer for measuring the constituents of extremely thin lunar atmosphere during its 20-minute descent to the lunar surface.

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