India Over The Moon

Ending days of tension caused by heavy rains, Chandrayaan-1, India’s maiden moon mission, took off as planned in a textbook launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, about 80 km north of Chennai, on Wednesday morning.

“It is a historic moment for India. We have started our journey to the moon and the first leg has gone perfectly well,“ Dr G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, said soon after the take-off at 6.22 am.

“Our baby is on way to the moon,” said the Chandrayaan project director, Mr Mylswamy Annadurai.

The indigenously built PSLV-CII rocket weighing 1380 kg is carrying a variety of precious payload. It was placed in the earth orbit 18.2 mins after the blast-off and is expected to reach the lunar orbit on November 8.

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Indian Space Research Organisation hopes tricolour on moon by October 28

Indian Space Research Organisation scientists are sitting pretty, preparations done and fingers crossed. The rocket PSLV-C11 is ready, the satellite Chandrayaan 1 is ready as well, and the country is waiting for the launch of what will be the first Indian step towards the moon and beyond.

Scientists are confident they will be able to launch India’s first mission to the moon — mainly an orbiter but also a 30-kg moon impact probe piggyback satellite — that is expected to hit the moon’s surface and unfurl the Indian flag between October 22 and 28. The only worry is that the north-eastern monsoon is expected to be more severe than usual. But Isro chairman Madhavan Nair was on Monday gung-ho about India’s entry into the elite club of space-faring nations.

Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, Dr Nair called upon the nation’s scientific community to rise to the opportunity and come up with innovative science studies by going to Venus, Mars, and other planets and their satellites in the solar system.

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