GUDIES’S WEBBLOG

With Chandrayaan-I creating waves the world over, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was today shown the first pictures sent by India’s maiden unmanned scientific mission to Moon. 

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair met Singh here this afternoon and briefed him on the lunar mission launched on October 22. 

Nair showed Singh the first pictures taken by the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC), one of the 11 payloads on Chandrayaan, depicting the northern and southern coasts of Australia. 

During the meeting, Singh expressed happiness on the significant milestone in space programme and congratulated Nair and his team for the successful mission. 

The TMC was successfully operated on Wednesday through a series of commands issued from the Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network at Bangalore. 

The first image taken at 8:00 am IST from a height of 9,000 km showed the Northern coast of Australia while another taken at 12:30 pm from a height of 70,000 km shows Australia’s Southern Coast.

The Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu on the outskirts of Bangalore received the first images which were processed by Indian Space Science Data Centre. 

“The images confirm excellent performance of the camera,” a top ISRO official said. 

Nair briefed Singh about the launch sequence and subsequent manoeuvering of the spacecraft to reach the final lunar orbit. The health of the spacecraft is good and all operations so far have been implemented as planned, he said. 

Models of PSLV C-11 and Chandrayaan-1 were also presented to the Prime Minister.