ISRO shares Chandrayaan pics, students to see landing

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Sunday took to micro-blogging platform Twitter to share the first pictures of Earth captured by the LI4 camera installed in Chandrayaan-2.

The Indian space agency also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi will watch the moon landing of the lander Vikram carried by the spacecraft Chandrayaan-2 along with selected students Two students studying in classes 8 to 10 from each state scoring the highest in a quiz contest organised by ISRO in coordination with MyGov.in can watch Vikram's landing along with Modi at the ISRO's Bengaluru centre, it said.

The lander 'Vikram' is expected to land on the moon on September 7, as per ISRO.

In a series of tweets on Sunday along with the images of Earth from space, ISRO said: "#ISRO First set of beautiful images of the Earth captured by #Chandrayaan2 #VikramLander. Earth as viewed by #Chandrayaan2 LI4 Camera on August 3, 2019 17:28 UT."

ISRO subsequently tweeted more images of the Earth clicked at 17:29, 17:32, 17:34 and 17:37 UT.

As regards the online quiz contest to be held between August 10-20, ISRO said it is holding it for students to create awareness about space programmes.

Participants for the online quiz contest have to create an account on www.MyGov.in.

The contest is open only for Indian citizens.

The criteria for selection of winners will be maximum correct answers in the shortest time.

The quiz duration will be five minutes and the number of questions will be 20.

Earlier on Friday, the fourth orbit raising activity for India's moon spacecraft Chandrayaan-2 was performed successfully at 3.27 p.m., the ISRO said.

The orbit of the Chandrayaan-2 was raised to 277x89,472 km by firing the onboard motors for 646 seconds, it said, adding that all spacecraft parameters are normal.

The fifth orbit raising manoeuvre is scheduled between 2.30 p.m. and 3.30 p.m. on August 6.

On July 22, the Chandrayaan-2 was injected into an elliptical orbit of 170x45,475 km by India's heavy lift rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV Mk III) in a text book style.

The spacecraft comprises three segments -- the Orbiter (weighing 2,379 kg, eight payloads), the lander 'Vikram' (1,471 kg, four payloads) and rover 'Pragyan' (27 kg, two payloads).