ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair told reporters here late Saturday that the moon mission operations were suspended in the absence of the radio link with the lunarcraft.

'The mission functions have been suspended as there is no contact with the spacecraft. Calling off the mission depends on what elements we get back. Investigations are on, Nair said.

The $80-million (Rs.380-crore) Chandrayaan was launched amid much fanfare Oct 22, 2008 from ISRO's spaceport Sriharikota, about 90 km from northeast of Chennai, on board the 316-tonne polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-CII), with 11 scientific payloads, including the moon impact probe that was crash-landed on the lunar surface Nov 14.

During its 10-month rendezvous with the earth's only natural satellite, the lunarcraft completed 3,400 orbits in 312 days and transmitted volumes of data from sophisticated scientific instruments such as terrain mapping camera, hyper-spectral imager and moon mineralogy mapper.

Chandrayaan's high-resolution cameras relayed over 70,000 digital images of the lunar surface, providing breathtaking views of mountains and craters, including those in the permanently shadowed area of the moon's polar region.

Of the 11 scientific instruments (payloads), five are Indian. Of the other six, three are from the European Space Agency (ESA), two from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the US and one from Bulgaria.