Article Posted on : - Oct 23, 2008

The ISRO team with a miniature of Chandrayaan and its rocket. PTI photo

BANGALORE (PTI): Chandrayaan-1, India's first lunar orbiter, continued its long journey to the moon as operations planned by the Indian Space Research Organisation scientists for raising its orbit went on satisfactorily today, ISRO sources said.

"The health of the spacecraft is normal," an ISRO official told PTI here.

The orbit-raising operations were carried out by scientists at ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), here, the nerve centre of the mission, along with experts from ISRO centres.

Chandrayaan-1 was yesterday placed into an elliptical orbit with a perigee (nearest point to earth) of 255 km and apogee (farthest point from the earth) of 23,000 km by the PSLV-C11, which blasted off from the spaceport of Sriharikota.

ISRO scientists plan to repeatedly fire the onboard Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) at opportune moments and the spacecraft is expected to settle into the lunar orbit on November 8.