INDIA: INDIA REGISTERED its growing technological and scientific capability by successfully launching its first lunar mission yesterday, marking a new step in Asia's competitive space race.
The unmanned Chandrayaan-1 (moon vehicle) spacecraft, shaped like a rectangular prism, blasted off without a hitch from a launchpad in southern Andhra Pradesh province on a two-year mission of exploration.
Its robotic probe will orbit the moon, compiling a three-dimensional atlas of the lunar surface and mapping the distribution of elements and minerals.
The spacecraft will try to detect traces of radon, uranium, thorium and Helium-3, a fuel vital for nuclear fusion of which even one ton, if successfully mined, would be capable of meeting India's energy requirements for one year.
Landing Chandrayaan-1 on the moon's surface would make India the world's fifth country and the sixth space agency to have attained this feat.
Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh hailed the launch as the "first step" in a historic milestone in the country's space programme. Cheers rang out at mission control at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, 80 km from the southern port city of Chinai (formerly Madras) on the southeastern coast as the spacecraft executed a "near perfect" launch.
The space vehicle is expected to reach lunar orbit in 15 days.
India launched its space programme in 1963 to reduce dependence on overseas agencies. It hopes the mission will boost its programme into the same league as Japan and China and aims for a manned space flight by 2015.