Bangalore: The countdown began today for Chandrayaan-1, India's unmanned moon mission, at Sriharikota spaceport with Indian Space Research Organisation gearing up for Wednesday's much-awaited launch.
"The countdown started at 5.20 am today. The 52-hour countdown has been optimised to 49 hours", ISRO spokesperson S Satish told PTI over telephone from Satish Dhawan Space Centre-SHAR in Sriharikota. "Propellant filling and management of the second stage of PSLV-C11 is in progress".
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is slated to be launched onboard India s home-grown rocket PSLV-C11 at 0620 hours on Wednesday.
The launch of Chandrayaan-1 will take place from the second launch pad at SDSC, SHAR, Sriharikota in the Nellore district of Andra Pradesh, about 100 km north of Chennai.
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft begins its journey from earth onboard PSLV-C11 and first would reach a highly elliptical Initial Orbit (10).
In the 10, the perigee (nearest point to earth) is about 250 km and apogee (farthest point from the earth) is about 23,000 km.
After circling the Earth in its 10 for a while, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is taken into two more elliptical orbits whose apogees lie still higher at 37,00 km and 73,000 km respectively. This is done at opportune moments by firing the spacecraft's Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) when the spacecraft is near perigee.
