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Hyderabad India (PTI) Sep 28, 2007 India and Russia held discussions here on possibility of cooperation in space exploration, including missions to the moon and Mars. General Anatoly Perminov, Head of the Federal Space Agency, Russia met Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair on the sidelines of the 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) here. "Discussions are on for possible cooperation with ISRO on missions to the moon and Mars," Perminov said. He said a special meeting of officials of space agencies from the two countries will be held in November to take the discussions forward. India is launching its lunar mission 'Chandrayaan-I' next year and is expected to announce Chandrayaan-II soon after. "International scientific community is keen to partner with India in Chandrayaan-II," a senior ISRO official said. Under the India-Russia joint space programme, the two countries would launch a research satellite constructed by students early next year. 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. Under the Indo-Russia joint project CORONAS-PHOTON, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research will supply a low-energy gamma-ray telescope for a Russian spacecraft that will be launched before mid-2008 to study solar physics. Discussions were also held to explore the possibility of India launching the Russian GLONASS-M satellites from its GSLV platforms and join Russia in developing the next generation GLONASS-K satellites for the Russian global navigation system.
related report The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), expected to be functional by 2012, will be used for surveying, telecommunications, transport, identifying disaster areas and public safety among others. The satellites will be placed at a higher so-called geostationary orbit to have a larger signal footprint and lower number of satellites to map the region, he said. The first satellite of the proposed constellation, developed at a cost of Rs 1,600 crore, is expected to be launched in 2009. Addressing a press conference on the sidelines of the 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Nair said India had the capability to launch a mission to Mars but there were no concrete proposals for research on the Red Planet. "The technological capability exists. We can use the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) to send a 500 kg payload to Mars," he said. However, he said to undertake a manned mission to Mars a very powerful rocket system was required to propel the spacecraft to the planet. On putting man in space, he said ISRO was preparing a project report on undertaking a human spaceflight. "We will submit the report to the government by March for its approval," he said. On Chandrayaan-I, he said the mission objective was to find the basic signature of evolution of the earth, explore the terrain and look for minerals and explore the possibility of setting up a base which could be used for future planetary missions. He said during the IAC he held bilateral talks with heads of seven space agencies, including that of the US, Russia and China. "The meetings were more of the sort of status review of the cooperation that already exists," he said. To a question, Nair said India is respected among the international community for developing its space programme independently. "The world is highly appreciative of our space applications programme and others, including the developed nations, are trying to copy it," he said. Nair said most of the space faring nations want to replicate India's success in the field of telemedicine and tele-education. Asked about the government announcement of launching 60 missions in the next five years, he said ISRO will be able to achieve that target by outsourcing satellite building operations. "Currently, we have about five to six launches every year and we can scale it by more and more outsourcing," Nair said.
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A Diversity of Worlds
Moffet Field CA (SPX) Sep 28, 2007In May 2007, Victoria Meadows, Principal Investigator for the Virtual Planetary Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology's Spitzer Science Center, presented a lecture at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In part four of this six-part edited series, she explains how different types of worlds, even ones not like the Earth, can still be potential havens for life. |
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