Lord of the Web

With one of the emerging superpowers China conducting a spacewalk and proving the power of its space technology, the onus is now on the other emerging star India to make a mark in the exclusive Space Club and prove to the world that it really is shining.

Chandrayaan (meaning journey to the moon) is India’s ambitious unmanned mission to the moon and Chandrayaan I, India’s spacecraft which is to take off for the moon, is on its way to Sriharikota Range, to be integrated with its launch vehicle PSLV-C11. The 50-hour countdown to the launch of Chandrayaan will start on the night of October 19.

The main objective of Chandrayaan-I is studying and analyzing the various minerals and chemical elements constituting the surface of the moon and taking high-resolution three-dimensional mapping of the entire lunar surface.

Costing almost Rs400 crore, the project aims at establishing the mineral resources of Earth’s heavenly companion and look into the possibility of mining these resources. Many other countries are also looking at the possibility of mining the abundant mineral resources on the moon.

ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) will launch Chandrayaan-I into a 240 km x 24,000 km earth orbit and then the spacecraft’s own propulsion system will be used to place it in a 100-km polar orbit around the moon. The satellite will weigh 1,304 kg and will be equipped with high-resolution remote sensing equipment for visible, near infrared, soft and hard X-ray frequencies.

Chandrayaan I is considered as the precursor to an even more ambitious project - a manned mission to the Moon. Seems like a kind of US-USSR cold war like scenario has erupted involving India and China. Time will tell which country will be the first to spring a “Apollo 11″