Pakistan's iCube Qamar enters lunar orbit for landing bid

Pakistan's first-ever satellite moon mission, iCube Qamar, entered into lunar orbit Wednesday, China National Space Administration said.

Pakistan has become the sixth country to bid for touching down on the Earth’s natural satellite.

Earlier on May 3, Pakistan launched its iCube Qamar aboard Chang’E-6 Mission from the Wenchang space launch site, Hainan in China.

The student cube satellite was carried by China's Long March-5 rocket.

The Chinese News Agency, quoting a statement from CNSA, said that the 'Cheng E6' successfully entered the lunar orbit at 10:12am. local time.

In-orbit testing of the satellite's systems will take a week, the report said, adding that the in-orbit testing of iCube Qamar's controllers, subsystems, and protocols has begun.

The satellite was designed and developed by the Institute of Space Technology (IST) in collaboration with China’s Shanghai University SJTU and Pakistan’s national space agency Suparco.

According to IST, the iCube-Q orbiter carries two optical cameras to take pictures and videos of the lunar surface.

Talking to a private news channel, IST's Dr Khurram Khurshid said that the mission will collect samples from the the surface of the moon for three to six months.

"Satellite will take different pictures of the moon's surface after which Pakistan will have its own satellite images of the moon for research," he added.

This is the first mission in history that will make a landing on the moon’s far side.