New Delhi, Nov. 12: Spacecraft controllers directed Chandrayaan-1 into a circular orbit 102km above the moon’s surface this evening, its intended orbital home for the next two years.

Indian Space Research Organisation engineers plan to spend a day or two studying the orbit of the spacecraft before initiating the next step in its mission — hurling a scientific payload towards the moon.

In this orbit, the spacecraft takes about two hours to go around the moon once. “We’ve reached the orbit we wanted,” said S.K. Shivkumar, director of Isro’s satellite tracking and command network.

“We’ll begin commissioning the other instruments one by one after we’ve released the moon impact payload,” said Mylswamy Annadurai, Chandrayaan-1 project engineer in Bangalore. “One payload — the radiation dose monitor — had been activated en route because we wanted to study the radiation environment in space on the way to the moon.”

Besides the impact payload, the spacecraft carries 10 scientific instruments to be used to create 3D maps of the lunar terrain in unprecedented detail, study lunar geology and minerals and amass information for future missions.

“We’re waiting for science to begin,” said Jitendra Nath Goswami, director of the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, a laboratory which had helped build a payload called the high energy X-ray spectrometer that will look for water ice in the polar regions of the moon. “But we’re not in any great hurry. We’re hoping to get data (from Chandrayaan-1) for a long time.”

During its 20-minute descent — before its destruction — sensors aboard the impact probe will transmit data that will help plan for future soft landings on the moon.

Researchers from the US, the European Space Agency and Bulgaria have built six of the 10 instruments. Payload team members are expected to be in Bangalore during the commissioning of each payload, an Isro official said.

The spacecraft is designed for a planned life of two years.