The first lunar probe from India transmitted images of the moon back to mission control, hours after landing successfully on the moon as part of a two-year mission aimed at laying the groundwork for further Indian space expeditions.
India's unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, or Moon Craft in ancient Sanskrit, was launched on 22 October from the Sriharikota space centre in southern India.
The box-shaped lunar probe carried a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer.
The video imaging system was to take the pictures of the moon's surface, the radar altimeter to measure the rate of descent of the probe to the lunar surface and the mass spectrometer was for studying the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.
Chief among the lunar mission's goals is mapping not only the surface of the moon, but what lies beneath.
India plans to follow the moon mission with landing a rover on the moon in 2011 and, eventually, a manned space program, though this has not been authorised yet.
Ebru News/AP
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India's First Lunar Probe Transmits Images
15
Nov
2008
Nov
2008
Ebru TV