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Dropping lunar mission, India eyes Mars

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-01 07:59

NEW DELHI: A day after its lunar mission was abandoned, India's state-run space agency Monday said it will launch its first mission to Mars sometime between 2013 and 2015.

"We have given a call for proposal to different scientific communities. Depending on the type of experiments they propose, we will be able to plan the mission. The mission is at conceptual stage and will be taken up after Chandrayaan-2. Once in two years you get an opportunity for the mission," Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman G. Madhavan Nair told local media in Panaji, capital of the western state of Goa.

India Sunday formally called off the Chandrayaan-1 moon mission, with the ISRO losing its radio contact with the craft.

"There was no possibility of retrieving it. (But) it was a great success. We could collect a large volume of data, including more than 70,000 images of the moon. In that sense, 95 percent of the objective was completed," Nair said when announcing the formal abandoning of the mission.

Communications with the Chandrayaan-1 satellite, which has been orbiting the moon for nearly a year, snapped on Saturday and scientists lost control of the satellite.

The space agency said it is investigating the communications failure.

The launch of Chandrayaan-1 in October 2008 put India in an elite club of countries with moon missions. Other countries with similar satellites are the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China.

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The agency plans to hold talks with the US and Russian space agencies to track the satellite, which is now orbiting 200 km from the surface of the moon, India's space spokesman S. Satish said Monday.

"Tracking of the spacecraft is of academic interest," he said.

The $80 million lunar spacecraft has had problems in the past. In May, the satellite lost a critical instrument called the star sensor. Two months later, the spacecraft overheated but scientists were able to salvage the craft and resume normal operations.

The spacecraft had completed around 95 per cent of the two-year mission's objectives, Satish said on Saturday.

Scientists say the Chandrayaan project will boost India's capacity to build more efficient rockets and satellites.

India plans to follow the Chandrayaan, which means "moon craft" in Sanskrit, by landing a rover on the moon in 2011.

Xinhua - AP