Date:30/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/30/stories/2008113053550500.htm

Tamil Nadu

More moon missions in the offing

Staff Reporter

SATHYAMANGALAM: Chandrayaan-I, Indian Space Research Organisation’s flagship programme, is only the beginning, and ISRO is looking at least three-four moon missions, including a manned one, and a mission to the Mars, Chandrayaan Project Director Mylswamy Annadurai said on Saturday.

Addressing students of the Bannari Amman Institute of Technology and a few other institutions here, he said the Moon Impact Probe, an idea of former President Abdul Kalam, was meant to study the moon’s surface.

The result would help to have a soft landing on the surface in future missions.

Chandrayaan-II would be a robotic mission to explore the possibility of using Helium-III, an isotope, in fusion reaction to produce electricity. Chandrayaan-III would seek to have a re-entry vehicle so that the country could bring whatever it wanted from the lunar surface.