'Chandrayaan-1 functioning normally'

Chandrayaan-1, India's first lunar orbiter, continued its long journey to the moon as operations planned by the ISRO scientists for raising its orbit went on satisfactorily, ISRO sources said.

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 on Thursday, ISRO sources said.

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

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

Chandrayaan-1 was on Wednesday placed into an elliptical orbit with a perigee (nearest point to earth) of 255 kms 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.