India's moon mission Chandrayaan 1 on track

The launch is expected in 2008. Co-operation with NASA too is expected after US President George Bush's visit to India.

1 March 2006
MUMBAI, INDIA

The Indian government has today informed the Lok Sabha today that the proposed moon mission of ISRO - the Chandrayaan -1 - is proceeding as per plan. International co-operation on the project too has been confirmed by the government. 'Chandrayaan' lieterally means 'moon craft'.

ISRO chairperson G Madhavan Nair recently told the Indian Express that a 'lunar mission cooperation agreement' would be formally signed during US President George W Bush's visit to India this Wednesday, confirming US cooperation on India's planned space mission to the moon. According to Nair, "an agreeable text has been arrived at and a Chandrayaan Specific agreement will be inked." Bush, who will be signing a dozen agreements with the Indian government in areas such as agriculture and biotechnology, will also facilitate the memorandum of understanding, which paves the way for co-operation in Chandrayaan-1 between US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and ISRO.

Despite hiccups, NASA and ISRO have been working hard to ease out bureaucratic hurdles, as well as on an acceptable text for the highly complex umbrella agreements called Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA) and the Technology Assistance Agreement (TAA). These agreements would allow India to commercially launch US satellites using Indian rockets.

Four instruments from Europe and two from the United States (which include the US MiniSar and the US payload, the moon mineralogy mapper), in addition to the main Indian scientific instruments, will be carried on India's unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan I, which is on course for its launch in 2007-2008. This is a goodwill gesture in accordance with building an international atmosphere of cooperation in the field of science and technology.

ISRO officials further added that, "The development of the spacecraft, instruments and establishment of deep space network are progressing satisfactorily." The objectives of the Chandrayaan-1 moon mission are to carry  out high resolution mapping of topographic features in 3D and to harness the science payloads, lunar craft and the launch vehicle with suitable ground support system. The lunar craft would not be landing, but instead will move in a polar orbit around the Moon, with special attention to data on the polar icecaps which may contain traces of water. Data will be collected via an impact probe.

India is also competing internationally for the launch of commercial satellites. According to ISRO officials, ISRO is planning to launch a series of 2,000 kg class communication satellites in the operational flights of GSLV between 2007-2010. GSLV-F04, the first flight in this batch, is aimed at meeting the national requirement in the areas of communication, meteorology and education. Additionally, the launch vehicle is deisgned to meet domestic requirements, and only the residual capacity will be made available for international commercial launches. ISRO is looking at a yearly forecast of 15 launches in Geostationary orbits and around six launches in other orbits.

In addition, ISRO will be placing an Italian satellite in orbit during April-May this year, and an Israeli satellite towards the end of the year. This is part of its commercial launches from Sriharikota. Also, the launch vehicles would not be for sale, only the launching itself would be commercially provided. The two launch vehicles used would be the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

Meanwhile, the US's proposal to allow an Indian to board one of its manned space shuttles, had received no response. While ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said, "ISRO has not received any formal proposal from the Americans on this issue," US officials believe that this "thanks but no thanks kind of response" from the Indian space community is "possibly because ISRO is currently focused on unmanned space exploration."

The total cost of India's Chandrayaan 1 Moon mission is expected to be Rs 3.8 billion (USD 83 million).