India loses communication with lunar satellite

India's national space agency says all communication links with the country's only satellite orbiting the moon have snapped and they are unable to send commands to the spacecraft. The Indian Space Research Organization says radio contacts with Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft were abruptly lost early Saturday. Space agency spokesman S. Satish told CNN-IBN television that the organization's monitoring unit near the southern city of Bangalore is no longer receiving data from the spacecraft nor is the satellite accepting commands. 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.

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