\u201ciCube-Qamar has made three rounds around the moon,\u201d says Institute of Space Technology
\nIslamabad
\niCube-Qamar, Pakistan\u2019s first satellite mission to the moon, sent the first-ever image of the moon captured in the lunar orbit, the Institute of Space Technology told Geo News on Friday.
\nEarlier, the satellite transmitted an image from the lunar orbit.
\nMaking this a groundbreaking development, according to IST, Qamar is the first Pakistani satellite to enter the lunar orbit and completed its rotation in 12 hours.
\n\u201cThe iCube-Qamar will image the lunar orbit from a distance of 200 kilometres from the surface of the moon,\u201d the IST said.
\nIt added that the signals of iCube-Qamar will be received on Earth by covering a distance of 360,000 to 400,000 km.
\n\u201ciCube-Qamar has made three rounds around the moon,\u201d the IST said.
\nThe first image was received two days after IST announced that the satellite was successfully deployed in orbit on May 8 at 1:14pm Pakistan time.
\nMeanwhile, the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan took to X, formerly Twitter, to congratulate Pakistan for the breakthrough.
\n\u201cWell begun is half done. As Pakistan\u2019s satellite ICUBE-Q successfully entered lunar orbit on Wed after 5 days of travelling, scientists received initial image data, laying solid foundation for in-depth [China-Pakistan] co-op in moon & deep space exploration,\u201d the embassy wrote in a post.
\nThe scientist termed the development \u201ca great success overall\u201d.
\nFollowing its deployment, the satellite will take images of the desired lunar surfaces in a carefully selected 12-hour elliptical orbit.
\nThe iCube-Qamar was launched on board China\u2019s Chang\u2019e-6 from Hainan, China, on May 3.
\nAhead of the launch of the satellite last week, Dr Khurram said that the Pakistani satellite will take different pictures of the surface of the moon after which Pakistan will have its own satellite images of the moon for research.
\nThe satellite was designed and developed by the Islamabad-based Institute of Space Technology (IST) in collaboration with China\u2019s Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) and Pakistan\u2019s national space agency Suparco.
\niCube-Qamar orbiter carries two optical cameras to image the lunar surface. Following successful qualification and testing, the orbiter was integrated with China\u2019s Chang\u2019e6 mission \u2014 the sixth in a series of lunar exploration missions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201ciCube-Qamar has made three rounds around the moon,\u201d says Institute of Space Technology Islamabad iCube-Qamar, Pakistan\u2019s first satellite mission to the moon, sent the first-ever image of the moon captured in the lunar orbit, the Institute of Space Technology told Geo News on Friday. Earlier, the satellite transmitted an image from the lunar orbit. Making […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-406091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-news"},"yoast_head":"\n