In the 21st century, various countries are in battle to send manned or unmanned mission to moon. India is also in the race and a space scientist has said that India should not be left behind in the race.
K. Kasturirangan, the well-known space scientist and Rajya Sabha member spoke on Chandrayaan I mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) during the second Raja Ramanna Memorial Lecture at the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Kolkata.
Dr. Kasturirangan, ISRO Chairman, said in the speech on the lunar mission and the challenges of building ASTROSAT that the proposed program is just a beginning from India. In future, there would be a series of lunar missions launched by India. India’s multi-wavelength astronomical observatory Astrosat will be launched in 2008
He said:
There might be land-up system, return sample system, an exploration of the lunar surface and resources, including Helium-3 that might meet future energy requirements.
Kasturirangan said later that the lunar mission would have the unusual equatorial orbit that would help the nation to know about the origin and evolution of the moon and the earth.
He said:
The earth is 4.5 billion years old but the history of the first three billion years has been washed away due to geological activities. By going to the moon, where these features were preserved, the scientists can know about the earth’s past.
According to him, the cost of the entire mission to moon would go to Rs. 200 crore and that was not a waste of taxpayers’ money at all. The ASTROSAT, expected to be launched in 2008, will be a pioneering penetration in multiple wavelength astronomy and it would work like a patrolling system in the sky.
