India's moon and space ambitions

Just a sidenote: Any country that has a real space program and can send satellites in space – is also the one which has an “indigenous” missile program, because both the technologies are the same! And any country which has missiles – like North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran and cannot even send a small ball into space on a rocket – then it stands to logic that they are basically the beneficiaries of Missile Proliferation attempts!!

India plans to launch its first mission to moon this year.  Indian Prime Minister has announced that this year, by October, India will send its moon mission on Chandrayan-I to moon.  It will be an unmanned mission and will orbit the moon for two years.

It will carry some investigative instruments from US as well.  In all 11 instruments have been integrated – 6 indigenous and five under international cooperation – on the spacecraft.

PSLV – or Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle – will be used for the purpose.  Currently the spacecraft is being thoroughly tested as the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has already completed it.  It is the size of an office cubicle.

The next flight to moon will land a rover on the moon itself to collect samples of rock and soil on moon for testing.  This will be done in a JV with Russia.

Meanwhile European space and moon enthusiasts are looking at India as the next space power and some have already used India as the carrier of their satellites.  As this Swiss astronaut – Claude Nicollier, the only European to have been to space four times assesses that India will be sending European astronauts to space within 7 years!!

“Europe does not have autonomous means to send people to space as we have taken a political decision not to do so but India will be sending men into space by 2013-15,” he told HT on Wednesday.

The next space goal for India is to send an Indian astronaut to space in the near future – by next decade.

Claude Nicollier wants to help India train these astronauts.