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| India-Pakistan |
| NASA to send two instruments on board Indian moon probe |
| 2006-05-07 |
| US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is to enter into an agreement with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday to send two scientific instruments on board Chandrayaan-I, the country's first unmanned moon mission. NASA administrator Michael Griffin will sign the MoU with ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair to send a mini synthetic aperture radar (miniSAR), developed by the agency's applied physics laboratory and a moon mineralogy mapper, built by the jet propulsion laboratory, an ISRO official said. The official said, "The American instruments will be part of the Chandrayaan payload, which will have 15-20 instruments, including 11 from India and three from the European Space Agency. The lunar mission is to be launched in 2007-08". A five-member NASA delegation, led by Griffin, will also hold discussions with ISRO officials on extending the Indo-US cooperation in space exploration as agreed during the visit of US President George W Bush to India in March. During the Bush trip, both the countries had agreed to continue exploring cooperation in civil space, including areas such as space exploration, satellite navigation, and earth science. The official said that NASA had evinced interest in joining India's moon mission project. Michael F O'Brien, NASA assistant administrator, will discuss with Indian space scientists the experiments to be conducted by the two US instruments on board Chandrayaan-I, which will circle around the lunar planet. "Project work on the moon mission is on course. Most of our instruments are at various stages of development. Some of them are meant to map the lunar surface and study its mineral content. The spacecraft has already been designed for fabrication over the next 12 months along with its sub-systems," the official said. Chandrayaan-I will be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on the east coast of Andhra Pradesh, using the new polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV). |
| Posted by:john |
| #5 During the Bush visit, India and the US decided to expand cooperation in civil space, including space exploration and satellite navigation. However, a more ambitious project between the two countries on a space launch agreement is still a distance away — this agreement would permit India to launch third country satellites with US components and technology in them. While the two countries have worked out the details of a technology safeguards agreement, which protects US technology from proliferation, a more mundane issue — a commercial launch agreement — is still out of reach. Meanwhile, India will push for removal of sanctions on the remaining ISRO entities that remain under US curbs The US had asked for an Indian astronaut on a US mission — which formed a part of the July 18 joint statement. But ISRO determined that it would entail a cost for India which it did not want to pay for — instead wanted to concentrate on unmanned missions. |
| Posted by: john 2006-05-07 15:15 |
| #4 Whaahhahahhaa..... yes, quite so. I'm reminded of that each time I check my flight reservations with Delta... via Deli. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-05-07 15:10 |
| #3 Think of it as earning interest on those outsourced call center and software jobs. ;-) |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-05-07 15:08 |
| #2 Not really outsourcing. NASA's missions remain on course. It's just two instruments on an Indian bird. In exchange NASA gets access to all the data from the various instruments - pretty useful for future moon missions. |
| Posted by: john 2006-05-07 14:59 |
| #1 The out-sourciing of NASA's mission to India, can it not be a good thing? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-05-07 11:34 |