Chandrayaan-1, Indias first mission to Moon, launched on October
22, 2008 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, has
completed eight months of successful operation and has made
3,000 revolutions around the Moon. Besides sending more than
70,000 images of the lunar surface which provide breathtaking
views of lunar mountains and craters, especially craters in the
permanently shadowed areas of the Moons polar region,
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is also collecting valuable data
pertaining to the chemical and mineral content of the Moon.
Chandrayaan-1s orbit was raised from 100 km to 200 km circular
on May 19, 2009. The high orbital altitude of Chandrayaan-1
reduces the resolution of the imagery but provides a wider swath
and the data is of good quality. The onboard star sensor used
for determining the orientation of the spacecraft started
malfunctioning on April 26, 2009. To overcome this anomaly, ISRO
devised an innovative technique of using redundant sensors
gyroscopes along with antenna pointing informatio