Chandrayaan-1 takes off

Chandrayaan-1 takes off

The flawless take-off gives a push to its global power ambitions

By P. Jayaram, India Correspondent
		-- PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW DELHI: India yesterday launched its first mission to the moon, reinforcing its claim to be considered as a global power.

The successful blast-off of the unmanned spacecraft gained it immediate membership of a select international club: To date only the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China have sent missions to the moon.

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The Chandrayaan-1, a cuboid spacecraft built by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), lifted off from a southern Indian space centre shortly after dawn. Chandrayan is the Sanskrit word for 'moon craft.'

As the rocket carrying the moon-orbiter roared into the sky, scientists at command control at Sriharikota, 80km from Chennai, clapped and cheered. Minutes later the rocket disappeared into the overcast sky.

The launch went flawlessly, with the craft injected into a transfer orbit around the globe within 19 minutes.

'This is a historic moment for India,' said ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair.

'We have started our journey to the moon and the first leg has gone perfectly well,' he said.

Barring any technical failure, the spacecraft will enter the moon's orbit in 15 days, and spend the next two years studying the moon's surface for evidence of water and precious metals.

ISRO scientists say the 1,400kg lunar probe will carry out one of the most intense explorations of its kind, with the mission's objectives including a high-resolution mapping of the lunar surface and the minerals below.

The orbiting probe will also explore the availability of water and helium, a clean source of energy, while a smaller probe will be dropped onto the planet's surface to analyse the composition of dust there.

Unlike China, which works on its space programme alone, India's moon mission represents an international technological collaboration.

The mission is carrying 11 payloads - five Indian, three from the European Space Agency, two from the US and one from Bulgaria, while two of the mapping instruments on board are the result of a joint project with Nasa.

But Indian scientists emphasised that the rocket technology used for the launch was almost entirely home-grown, and had had to be developed from scratch.

India was forced to work largely alone, as it faced stringent technological export regimes after testing nuclear devices in 1974 and 1998, although the signing of a nuclear cooperation agreement with the US earlier this month will open up the import of high technology.

India's space ambitions took off on the back of a booming economy, and yesterday's launch also served as a distraction from the current economic slowdown triggered by the global financial crisis.

At the same time, the 'Chandrayan-1' mission comes on the heels of China's first space walk last month and unmanned probes from China and Japan last year, with observers saying India did not want to fall behind in an Asian space race.

The ISRO says it is planning more launches before a proposed manned mission to space and then onto Mars in four years' time.

'India is signalling that it could be a much more important player geo-politically and regionally,' said Ms Seema Desai, of London-based political risk consultant Eurasia Group.

India over the moon but science still undermined

CNN-IBN

On Wednesday, Chandrayaan-1 - India's first unmanned mission to the moon - blasted off to start its journey to study the earth's satellite. But despite the breakthrough for India and for the team of scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation, there is a sense that India has failed to popularise science as a way of life and is instead teaching it as a mere subject that required cramming. [0855 hrs IST]