Monday, 31st August 2009, An official confirmed the Quit unmanned moon mission after fail attempts to regain contact with the orbiter.
The Indian space research organization has currently no means to locate Chandrayaan-I in the orbit. It can float like a dead satellite for 1000 days before crashing on the lunar surface.
“We are exploring the possibility of making a request to the United States and Russia to help locate it since they have powerful radars,” Satish said.
The space agency blames system failures on Chandrayaan-I for the abrupt loss of contact Saturday.
Chandrayaan-I was originally expected to stay in orbit for two years, but Satish said that was a stretch.
“That probably was a mistake because such craft do not have this much life,” he said.
However, the mission had met most of its scientific objectives by providing “large volume of data,” the space agency said.
In 312 days, it completed more than 3,400 orbits around the moon before vanishing off the radar and losing contact.
Chandrayaan-I had been launched to take high-resolution, three-dimensional images of the lunar surface.
