[FPSPACE] article on INdian lunar launch

[Peter Pesavento]

Also has a nice color photo of the rocket

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/world/asia/22indiamoon.html?hp

 

October 22, 2008


India Prepares Moon Launch 


By SOMINI SENGUPTA
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/somini_sengupt
a/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 

NEW DELHI - India
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/in
dia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>  was preparing to launch its first unmanned
space ship to orbit the moon
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/moon/index.html?inline=ny
t-classifier>  early Wednesday, part of an effort to assert its power in
space and claim some of the business opportunities out there.

The launch of Chandrayaan-1, as the vehicle is called (it means, roughly
translated, "Moon Craft-1") comes about a year after China's first moon
mission. The Indian mission is scheduled to last for two years, prepare a
three-dimensional atlas of the moon and prospect its surface for natural
resources, including uranium, a coveted fuel for nuclear power plants,
according to the Indian Space Research Organization.http://www.isro.org
<http://www.isro.org/> 

The space craft will not land on the moon, though it will send a small
"impactor" probe to the surface.

Allusions to an Asian space race could not be contained, even as Manmohan
Singh
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/manmohan_singh
/index.html?inline=nyt-per> , the Indian prime minister, was due for a visit
to China later in the week.

"China has gone earlier, but today we are trying to catch them, catch that
gap, bridge the gap," Bhaskar Narayan, a director at the Indian space
agency, told Reuters.

The maiden Indian lunar voyage will carry two devices from NASA
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nationa
l_aeronautics_and_space_administration/index.html?inline=nyt-org> . One, the
Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3, will assess mineral composition of the moon
from orbit. The other, the Mini-SAR, will to look for ice deposits in the
moon's polar regionswww.nasa.gov/directorates/esmd/home/griffin-india.html. 

It is scheduled to be launched from a research station in Sriharikota, a
barrier island off the coast of southern Andhra Pradesh state.

The moon mission, in addition to demonstrating technological capacity, can
also potentially yield commercial gains for India's space program. India's
ability to put satellites into orbit has already resulted in lucrative
deals, including from Israel, which has sent up a satellite via an Indian
launcher.

"It is proof of India's technical capability in an advanced area of
science," said Dipankar Banerjee, a retired army general who heads the
Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies here. "India wants to be counted as
one of the emerging players in Asia. Space is of course an important part of
power projection."

The mission was not without domestic critics. Bharat Karnad, a strategic
affairs analyst who frequently finds fault with the Congress Party-led
coalition government, called the mission a "grandiloquent" effort designed
to catch up with a far more advanced Chinese space program. "It is kind of a
prestige project the government has gotten into," he argued. "This is misuse
of resources that this country can ill afford at this point."

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.friends-partners.org/pipermail/fpspace/attachments/20081021/4ff59a27/attachment.html