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India, Russia mulling over moon mission

MOSCOW: India and Russia are discussing plans to send an unmanned mission to the moon and soft-land a mobile laboratory on its surface.

An agreement to undertake the ambitious joint lunar programme will be on the table when head of the Russian Space Agency Roskosmos Anatoly Perminov visits India this week to attend the 58th International Astronautical Congress in Hyderabad on September 24-28 and hold talks with ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair.

India could provide a booster rocket and a lunar orbital module, while Russia would contribute the lunar mobile laboratory, Roskosmos deputy head Alexander Medvedchikov told The Hindu.

The Soviet Union delivered the world’s first unmanned rover, called Lunokhod, to the Moon in 1970 and 1973.

It explored the moon surface and sent pictures to earth. Russian spacecraft also photographed the moon and brought samples of lunar rock to earth several years before the United States landed man on the moon.

Next year India will launch its first lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, which will circle the moon, but not land any module on its surface.

Under the India-Russia joint space programme, the two countries would launch a research satellite constructed by students early next year, Mr. Medvedchikov said.

Indian students are building the satellite, called Youth Sat, while Russian students are constructing scientific instruments for the mission, which will study the earth’s upper atmosphere.

The India-Russia joint project CORONAS-PHOTON provides for the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research to supply a low-energy gamma-ray telescope for a Russian spacecraft that will be launched before mid-2008 to study solar physics.

Mr. Medvedchikov said plans were in the pipeline for India to launch Russian GLONASS-M satellites on its GSLV platforms and to join Russia in developing the next generation GLONASS-K satellites for the Russian global navigation system.

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