It’s just as well that the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has decided to collaborate with other countries in exploring the moon. Isro chairman G. Madhavan has announced that India has offered to carry 10 kg of scientific equipment from other space agencies around the world. Apart from the technological edge that these hi-tech US and European instruments would bring to the mission, such an inclusive profile may deflect some of the criticism facing the 2007-08 Indian moon mission.
An updated version of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is expected to launch the spacecraft, before injecting it into its final orbit around the moon. The probe should then be able to carry out mapping for minerals and metals on the moon’s surface. Critics have a point when they ask what the Isro hopes to achieve that all those US and Russian missions could not. But then, failure to master space amounts to being second best in everything, no matter how hi-tech India becomes.
Didn’t Isro learn this bitter lesson when it lost the equivalent of a precious decade by dragging its feet on developing cryogenic rocket engines in the Nineties? The moon effort gives Isro a chance to work closely with other space agencies to develop new capabilities in other areas of space exploration as well, such as having a deep space tracking centre. The space agency could even try to develop a single-stage-to-orbit booster that would reduce satellite launch costs remarkably, and bring in business worth billions of rupees.