With the planting of the tri-colour on the moon through the successful Chandrayaan-I moon mission, India has secured a place in the distinguished club of space-trotting nations. This should boost national self-belief, as it is a demonstration of the country's technological prowess, and managerial and execution abilities. The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) deserves kudos for this feat, as indeed for its very creditable record so far on a much broader front. The journey to the moon has of course been done by others before, including manned missions by the US nearly 40 years ago, and unmanned missions have even reached Mars and other planets; Chinese astronauts recently did a spectacular space walk. Against those, Chandrayaan-I might look like a modest effort. Still, there are several firsts that this clock-work mission has to its credit, to set it apart from the others.
Chandrayaan-I is the first instance in space exploration history in which the maiden mission of any country has succeeded in reaching the earth's natural satellite; all others did so after one or more aborted attempts. The number of scientific instruments (payloads) carried by Chandrayaan-I is the largest ever for a single spacecraft. Moreover, costing under Rs 400 crore, it is the cheapest mission to trek over 3,86,000 kms in space to arrive at another celestial body. This apart, though much of the surface of the moon has already been mapped and photographed, none of the earlier missions has prepared a high resolution atlas of the moon's polar regions, a gap which Chandrayaan-I is designed to fill. Equally significantly, Chandrayaan-I has been designed to look for ice/water, believed to be present beneath the moon's surface at the poles; this will be the most extensive search of its kind in lunar exploration history. Going a step further, Chandrayaan-I will try to locate helium-3, counted among the cleanest fuels and one that can potentially meet the world's energy needs, as well as deposits of uranium and thorium, which can be used to run nuclear power units on earth.
These objectives apart, the technology used for the launch and maneuvering of the spacecraft, including the risky business of crossing the zone where the gravity of the earth and the moon cancel each other, to enter into lunar orbit, can prove handy for various civil and strategic uses. India is already taking significant strides in developing missiles capable of transcending long distances. The socio-economic and academic spin-off in terms of getting more satellite launch orders, industrial development and a revival of the waning interest in science among students, will not be insignificant. As far as space technology itself is concerned, the Chandrayaan-I mission has boosted Indian space scientists' self-belief, and will encourage them to take up even more challenging tasks. Chandrayaan-II will be carrying a landing platform and a moon rover to soft-land and move about on wheels on the lunar surface, and has been approved by the Cabinet for launch in 2011 or 2012. After that, Isro officials hope to undertake a manned space flight by 2015. These will be much more complex missions than Chandrayaan-I, and Isro seems ready to take them on.
