Bangalore, July 28 - India's first lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 captured the shadow of the moon on the earth's surface during the July 22 total solar eclipse, an Indian space agency official said Tuesday.

The images were captured by the terrain mapping camera (TMC) on board the 514-kg spacecraft, which is orbiting at 200 km above the lunar surface.

'Chandrayaan tracked the movement of moon's shadow on the earth during the total solar eclipse. The high resolution images of the TMC from 07:45 IST show the lunar shadow spreading its footprint from north-eastern China to northern parts of Australia,' Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish told IANS here.

The dark shadow of the umbra region can be vividly seen in the series of images the space agency released a week after the celestial event. The spacecraft digitally transmitted the pictures to the space agency's Deep Space Network (DSN) at Baylalu, about 40 km from this tech hub.

Solar eclipse is caused when the moon covers the sun partially or completely to cast a shadow on the earth.

'The digital images were processed and scanned at our Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad and the telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) in Bangalore. The capturing of the solar eclipse confirms the spacecraft is orbiting the moon even at 200 km with all its payloads satisfactorily,' Satish said.

The indigenously built seven-kg TMC is a hi-tech camera that maps the moon's topography and prepares a three-dimensional atlas with high spatial and altitude resolution. It also helps in better understanding of the lunar evolution process.

The nine-month-old mooncraft suffered a setback in April-May when its star sensor malfunctioned and lost orientation due to excessive radiation of the sun when it was orbiting at 100 km above the lunar surface.