The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) abruptly lost radio contact with the unmanned spacecraft at around 0130 hrs IST on Friday. Data was last received from spacecraft shortly after midnight.
ISRO was not in communication with Chandrayaan 1 and was unable to determine what was happening to the spacecraft after the radio link was lost.
Powered by a single solar panel generating about 700 watts, the Isro probe carries five Indian-built instruments and six constructed in other countries, including the US, Britain and Germany.
The mission was expected to cost 3.8bn rupees (£45m; $78m), considerably less than Japanese and Chinese probes sent to the Moon last year.
ISRO Said the " he spacecraft has completed 312 days in orbit, making over 3,400 orbits around the moon and providing large volume of data from sophisticated sensors like terrain mapping camera, hyper-spectral imager, moon mineralogy mapper and so on, meeting most of the scientific objectives of the mission, "
In February 2009, a “prime sensor” of the spacecraft developed a snag. The device enables scientists to determine altitude and forced its failure forced ISRO to push the spacecraft’s orbit from 100 km to 200 km from the moon's surface. The change in orbit means the data would be of lower quality.
India plans to send an astronaut into space by 2014 and a manned mission to the moon by 2020. The Government has approved the launch of Chandrayaan-2, which is expected to take off between 2010 and 2012, and will include a rover that will land on the moon..
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