New Delhi, Nov. 9: Chandrayaan-1 entered a new lunar orbit tonight that will take it as close as 200km from the moon’s surface.

Spacecraft controllers activated the main thrust engine at 8.03pm Indian time for 57 seconds, lowering the craft’s closest point to the moon from yesterday’s 504km to 200km.

The farthest orbital point is still about 7,500km from the moon. Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) engineers plan to fire the thrust engine again tomorrow to reduce the most distant orbital point to just 250km.

The Chandrayaan-1 mission trajectory initially released by Isro had indicated that the second lunar orbit would take the spacecraft up to 125km from the moon. But senior Isro officials told The Telegraph tonight that there was nothing sacrosanct about the numbers, and the near point of 200km achieved today was acceptable.

“We’re going step by step,” said a senior Isro engineer. While guiding Chandrayaan-1 away from Earth, the spacecraft controllers had added two extra orbits to gain greater experience of controlling spacecraft in deep space.

“We’re now getting used to orbital operations in the moon’s gravity — one-sixth of Earth’s,” a spacecraft engineer said.

Each successive orbit-lowering operation involves a slight reduction in the speed of the spacecraft that will move it closer and closer towards its target 100km orbit. Chandrayaan-1 is expected to be guided into the target orbit around November 14.