India's first unmanned moon mission, Chandrayaan-1 has been making headlines for past few days. And now, the spacecraft has flashed down two beautiful pictures of the Earth it took on 29th October. The Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) installed on board the spacecraft clicked these pictures after it was switched on. The TMC took the first picture on 29th October at 8 a.m. from a height of 9,000 km, which displays the northern coast of Australia. The second picture shows the southern coast of Australia, which was taken at 12:30 p.m. from a height of 70,000 km.

The Space Applications Centre of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is behind the invention of the TMC, which acts as an efficient imaging instrument. The team's motive behind building this instrument is to take pictures of the entire surface of the Moon. Back on 22nd October, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C11) of ISRO put Chandrayaan-1 into its initial orbit with an apogee of 22,866 km and a perigee of 256 km.

"Although we tested all the 11 scientific instruments of Chandrayaan-1 on the ground, we wanted to cross-verify, after the launch, the entire chain of its instruments, data storage, data handling systems, down linking and radio frequency systems including the antennas at Byalalu village near Bangalore and the ground processing of the images. The entire system is ready now," said M. Annadurai, Project Director; Chandrayaan-1.

He further added, "The first pictures might not be of much scientific value but we are able to verify en route to the moon the full chain of systems. This shows that the instruments on board Chandrayaan-1 are ready to image the moon after it goes into the final orbit around the moon."

"The entire team is happy because the systems on the ground and on board the spacecraft are in place," informed Mr. Annadurai.

The camera has a resolution of 5 meters and is capable of taking black and white pictures of an object by recording the visible light reflected from it. Once TMC click pictures of the moon's entire surface, it will give the scientists a better insight of the early origin and evolution of the moon.