India’s great leap over the moon

The country is about to begin its campaign to conquer the moon, setting the tone for its role in a future global effort to colonise earth’s natural satellite. Nirad Mudur reports from Bangalore

On October 22, the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is expected to blast off from Sriharikota and aim for the moon, making India join an elite club of a handful of nations to have tried sojourning at the earth’s natural satellite.

Just days ago, action stations at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) moved
Chandrayaan-1 from the Isro Space Applications Centre (Isac) in Bangalore to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota, about 80km north of Chennai. The spacecraft will orbit the moon for two years at an altitude of 100km before Isro’s scientists will intentionally crash it into the moon’s surface.

Some critics have suggested India is merely reinventing the wheel since the Americans and the Soviets have already done substantial work on the moon, not to speak of their numerous manned moon missions: between 1958 and 1976, the two superpowers carried out 69 unmanned and manned moon missions; the six successful US manned missions, starting with Apollo 11, between 1969 and 1972, and the three USSR missions between 1970 and 1976 were applauded the world over. Contrast this with Isro scientists saying that India is still not equipped to send its own ‘vyomanauts’ (‘vyom’ is ‘space’ in Sanskrit) to the moon.

India may be late, but it has an agenda. “Till now, moon missions have been in localised spaces,” says M Annadurai, mission director, Chandrayaan-1. “But we are planning to cover the entire moon, both sides of it — the one which faces the earth and the one which faces away.” (You may recall from your school science class that the moon rotates around its axis and revolves around the earth in roughly the same time: 28 days. Therefore, one side of the moon always faces the earth while the other always remains hidden.)