Indian moon probe nears lunar orbit

India's first unmannedlunar mission made a final manoeuvre on Tuesday morning, putting it on target to enter orbit around the moon on Saturday, India's space agency said.

The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was successfully launched on Oct. 22 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the island of Sriharikota, off the Bay of Bengal.

On Tuesday morning, the spacecraft raised its orbit after firing its engine for two and half minutes. The manoeuvre will put the spacecraft on a looping trajectory that will take it some 380,000 km from Earth.

The spacecraft, which had a takeoff weight of more than 1.3 tonnes, is scheduled to orbit the moon on a two-year mission. So far, its systems have performed well, the Indian Space Research Organization the country's state-run space agency said Tuesday.

The probe will enter a lunar orbit at a distance of about 100 km from the surface of the moon on Saturday, Nov. 8. The rocket is carrying 11 scientific payloads: five from India, two from the U.S. and one each from Britain, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria. India's space agency said the probe would map a three-dimensional atlas of the moon and study the chemical and mineral composition of its surface.

India is the third Asian country to send an unmanned mission into lunar orbit, as Japan and China both successfully launched lunar probes in 2007. The United States, Europe and the former Soviet Union have also sent probes that have orbited or landed on the moon.

The launch of Chandrayaan-1 is the first step of the country's long-term ambitions to conduct a manned moon mission by 2020. India has also announced plans for the launch of Chandrayaan-2 which is expected to land a rover on the moon by 2012 and a manned space mission by 2015 using Indian systems and technology.