Chandrayaan - indian mission to moon

I nearly missed this editorial from The Hindu, a newspaper I used to read while in Chennai, but a chance search on Net brought this before me and I thought why not share it with you all..

I agree that chandrayaan-1 will be a mission that will surely boost India's self-confidence and self reliance.

Asians are heading out to the Moon. In September, the Japanese unmanned spacecraft, the Selenological and Engineering Explorer, nicknamed 'Kaguya,' was launched. It was followed a month later by China's Chang'e-1 space probe. Both spacecraft, safely in orbit around the Moon, have started sending back images and data. Meanwhile, the Indian Space Research Organisation's engineers are racing to get Chandrayaan-1 ready for its flight scheduled for April 2008.

South Korea announced recently that it too wanted to build a launch vehicle and send its own probe to the Moon by 2020. "An Asian Moon race is neither particularly worrying nor especially inspiring," the science journal Nature editorialised recently. After all, it noted, in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union mounted dozens of manned as well as unmanned missions to the Moon and brought back samples. There is, however, no space race to the Moon among Asians or anyone else. Those who study planetary bodies argue that there is much good science to be done by exploring and examining the Moon in unprecedented detail. As a result, both U.S. and European institutions are providing several scientific instruments for the Chandrayaan-1 mission.
There is the tantalising possibility of the Moon holding mineral and other resources that might become invaluable some time in the future.


An important reason for visiting the Earth's natural satellite is that such missions provide the hands-on experience indispensable to future explorations of other planetary bodies and beyond. So, as Asian nations grow in economic strength, scientific prowess, and self-confidence, it is natural that they should want to keep open avenues in space to the opportunities of tomorrow. The U.S. is committed to returning humans to the Moon by 2020 and then embarking on the manned exploration of Mars. Although both China and India are known to be contemplating sending astronauts to the Moon, neither country has yet formally committed itself to such a goal. But more unmanned exploration is very much on the cards. China, for instance, is planning to send a rover that can move about on the lunar surface, and in a later mission to bring back rock and soil samples. India too is thinking along similar lines. During Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent visit to Russia, the space agencies of the two countries signed an agreement to work together on Chandrayaan-2, a mission to land a rover on the Moon during 2011-2012. From the dawn of human history, Earth's nearest neighbour has held its allure - and not without reason