Stop putting ISRO down, lunar mission a "fantastic success": ESA

Bangalore: Indian media's traditional carping ways with respect to any national success story in critical or strategic areas came in for lambasting from an unusual source, with a European project scientist with the Chandrayaan-1 mission suggesting that the media should take onboard the achievement that underlies the mission rather than questioning its early termination.

Ina email-interview with a news agency, Detlef Koschny, European Chandrayaan-1 project scientist, said though the space craft's life was cut short, the mission was a "fantastic success."

India's lunar mission had carried three scientific payloads from the European Space Agency (ESA).

According to Koschny, the European teams were "much excited" about the results they achieved. "I think (the) Indian press should stop trying to put ISRO down. You should rather acknowledge the fantastic achievements your space agency did," he said, listing many of the achievements.

"You sent a spacecraft to the moon and entered a low lunar orbit -- a very high challenge which is already a fantastic success," Koschny said.

"Secondly, all scientific instruments were commissioned and worked flawlessly. The data came down, over a distance of about 400,000 km and it was put together into images, atomic counts etc."