Moon sends a bolt from blue
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The Indian Space Research Organisation lost contact with the Rs 380-crore spacecraft 10 months into its intended two-year mission that helped India gain experience in a deep space venture yet humbled Isro by its challenges.
The space agency said the Isro Deep Space Network station near Bangalore lost radio contact with Chandrayaan-1 abruptly at 1.30am on Saturday after receiving routine housekeeping telemetry signals from the spacecraft until 12.25am.
During that hour, the spacecraft would have moved to the moon’s far side, and radio silence was expected, a senior official said. “We expected to pick up telemetry at 1.30am which never came,” the official said.
Engineers at the Deep Space Network today analysed the last sets of telemetry data from the spacecraft in an attempt to understand better what might have happened, but sources indicated that the spacecraft mission was over.
The trouble on the spacecraft began months ago with the high temperature and electromagnetic radiation levels at its 100km lunar orbit appearing to cause problems with components involved in power distribution, the sources said.
From The Telegraph