Where is Chandrayaan now

Where is chandrayaan now…

It’s in the fourth orbit raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft today (October 29, 2008). Chandrayaan-1 entered into a more elliptical orbit whose apogee (farthest point to Earth) lies at 267,000 km while the perigee (nearest point to Earth) lies at 465 km.Now Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is more than half the way to moon. In this orbit, the spacecraft might take six days to go round the Earth once. And there is 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.

Let’s hope for the best :)

Came to know that there is one more main part of Chandrayaan’s mission, its to explore helium-3 resources from moon. It seems moon has abundant resources of helium-3 from earlier studies; which could be used in Fusion reactors to produce power. Following is an animation to explain how the fusion occurs in DT helium reactor. One atom of deuterium and one atom of tritium combine to form a helium-4 atom and a neutron. Most of the energy released is in the form of the high-energy neutron.

Fusion of Deuterium with Tritium creating helium-4, freeing a neutron, and releasing 3.5 MeV of energy.

Update on 31st August 2009: Couple of days before ISRO lost contact with Chandrayaan. which is not a Good news but scientists say Chandrayaan has made almost 95% of its work so far... This sounds good & let wish all the best for the future endeavours of ISRO.

CNN NEWS

Regards

Fauzi ~ 4z