“My heartiest congratulations to you all for the remarkable job. A remarkable journey to the moon has begun,” a jubilant G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said on the successful launch of India's first mission to the moon on Wednesday morning.“We have fought against many odds, including the weather in the last few days, to achieve this success.”
“We will be completing the second part of the journey in about two weeks time,” Nair said, referring to placing India's lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 on an orbit just 100 km above the surface of the moon.
As soon as the 1.38-tonne Chandrayaan-1 carrying eleven payloads separated from ISRO's launch workhorse, PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) to orbit on its own, Nair and his colleagues shook hands and hugged one another to mark the successful launch.
The launch was described by scientists at the Sriharikota (SHAR) spaceport, 80 km from Tamil Nadu capital Chennai, as a “beautiful, textbook launch”.
Within seconds of blast-off in a sky that was only lightly speckled by clouds, the PSLV achieved a speed of one seven km per second and soared aloft, leaving behind a plume of fire and smoke, before it completed its mission.
As the various ground tracking stations of ISRO started receiving signals from the orbiting Chandrayaan-1 that all was well, the organisation also started receiving congratulatory messages from space agencies and scientists around the world.
