ISRO terminates Chandrayaan-1 moon mission: Nair

Panaji, Aug 30 (PTI) India's maiden Rs 400 crore moon
mission Chandrayaan-1 was on Sunday terminated, about one year
before the odyssey's expected end, after Indian Space Research
Organisation (ISRO) failed to restore snapped communication
link with the unmanned spacecraft.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) while
announcing that the planned two-year lunar mission, launched
amid a national euphoria on October 22 last year, has been
formally called off said it would set up a high level
committee to probe the abrupt end.

"We don't have contact with the spacecraft and we had to
terminate the mission," a visibly disappointed ISRO chief G
Madhavan Nair told reporters here.

The mission was abandoned early Saturday shortly after
radio contact with the craft was abruptly lost at 0130 HRS.

ISRO tried to send the commands but the space vehicle was
not able to respond. "The power signals which go to the
computer systems failed."

Nair said the malfunction in computers on-board the
spacecraft led to the failure in communications. "We tried to
recover the communications for the entire day yesterday."

The ISRO chief was talking to reporters on the eve of
the start of the eighth international conference on Low Cost
Planetary missions.

Nair however put up a brave face to say the mission was a
great success and 95 per cent of its objective was completed.
"We could collect a large volume of data, including 70,000
images of the moon."

He also said that India has already initiated discussions
with USA and Russia to use their radars to track the
spacecraft which is revolving in the orbit, about 200 kms away
from the moon. (MORE) PTI