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The fourth orbit raising manoeuvre of
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was carried out today (October 29, 2008) morning at
07:38 am IST. During this manoeuvre, the spacecrafts 440 Newton liquid engine
was fired for about three minutes. With this, Chandrayaan-1 entered into a more
elliptical orbit whose apogee (farthest point to Earth) lies at 267,000 km (two
lakh sixty seven thousand km) while the perigee (nearest point to Earth) lies
at 465 km. Thus,
Chandrayaan-1 spacecrafts present orbit extends more than half the way to
moon. In this orbit, the spacecraft takes about six days to go round the Earth
once.
The health of the spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the
Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network
(ISTRAC) in Bangalore with support from Indian Deep Space Network antennas at
Byalalu. All systems onboard the spacecraft are performing normally. One more
orbit raising manoeuvre is scheduled to send the spacecraft to the vicinity of
the moon at a distance of about 384,000 km from the Earth.
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