SINGAPORE, 22 OCTOBER 2008 - India's first lunar spacecraft was launched from Sriharikota, the country’s spaceport on early Wednesday.
With the launch of the lunar orbiter Chandrayaan, India has joined the select club of countries that have sent missions to the moon, including the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan.
According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientists, Chandrayaan will orbit the moon for two years. It carries 11 experimental payloads, five Indian and six from the European Space Agency, the US and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, reported agencies.
New Asian space and technology superpower
India hopes Chandrayaan-1 will help throw off the country's image as a poverty-stricken nation, pointing instead to its race to become another Asian space and technology superpower.
In September last year Japan rocketed its Kaguya probe into lunar orbit, beaming back the first high-definition television pictures of the Earth from another world. It was followed a month later by Chang'e, China's first moon mission.
China, which plans to land an unmanned rover on the moon within 10 years, has already put six astronauts into space. India's space agency has proposed launching its own manned spacecraft in the next decade.
Britain's Guardian newspaper reported yesterday that Chandrayaan-1's objectives include mapping the moon's supply of helium-3, a potential fuel for future fusion power reactors.
Although helium-3 is rare on Earth, a former Indian space agency director, Professor U.R.Rao, was quoted as saying the moon might have enough "to produce energy for 8000 years".
In 2006 China's Chang'e project leader told the China Daily that "each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough [helium-3] for all human beings across the world".
As well as five Indian-made instruments, including two cameras, the crash lander, and a laser to measure the moon's topography to within 10 metres, Chandrayaan-1 will carry six experiments made by Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria, the United States and the European Space Agency. The US equipment includes a radar to map the surface and a device to survey its minerals.
The US intends to launch the unmanned Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, its first step in returning astronauts to the moon by 2020, early next year. (Source: Sydney Morning Herald and Agencies)
