ISRO terminates Chandrayaan-1 mission

Panaji: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Sunday said the Chandrayaan-1 moon mission had been formally called off after loss of radio contact with the craft. There was no possibility of retrieving it, ISRO chairman Madhavan Nair said here on Sunday.

"We don't have contact with the spacecraft and we had to terminate the mission," Nair told reporters.

Nair termed the moon mission as a great success pointing out that 95 per cent of its objectives had been met. "We could collect a large volume of data, including 70,000 images of the moon."

He clarified that the joint Indo-Russian Chandrayaan-II mission would remain on track for an 2012-13 launch, absorbing ''valuable lessons learnt in the Chandrayaan-1 expedition.''

Nair was in the city to attend the eighth international conference on 'Low Cost Planetary Missions.'

He said the power-supply units controlling both the computer systems on board failed due to very high radiation in the atmosphere, resulting in the loss of communication. This was because some devices were more susceptible to radiation and temperature fluctuations.