NEW DELHI:

India’s space agency has abandoned the country’s only satellite orbiting the moon after efforts to revive communication with it failed, an official said today.

Communications with the Chandrayaan-1 satellite, which has been orbiting the moon for nearly a year, snapped Saturday and scientists lost control of the satellite. The space agency’s efforts to restore contact since then have failed, said agency spokesman S Satish. “The mission has been terminated,” Satish quoted G Madhavan Nair, chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation, as saying yesterday.

The space agency said it is investigating the communications failure.

The launch of

Chandrayaan-1 in October 2008 put India in an elite club of countries with moon

missions. Other countries with similar satellites are the United States, Russia, the

European Space Agency, Japan and China.

The agency plans to

hold talks with the US and Russian space agencies

to track the satellite, which

is now orbiting 125 miles from the surface of the moon, Satish said today.

“Tracking of the spacecraft

is of academic interest,”

he said.

The $80 million lunar spacecraft has had problems in the past. In May, the

satellite lost a critical

instrument called the star sensor. Two months later, the spacecraft overheated but

scientists were able to

salvage the craft and resume normal operations.

The spacecraft had completed around 95 per cent of the two-year mission’s objectives, added Satish.