Just as China Wednesday launched an astronaut into space aboard the Shenzhou V craft in a historic mission which catapults it into an elite club alongside Russia and the United States, India rested its own space ambitions on the country's tech-savvy youngsters.

The Hindustan Times was full of praise for Delhi-based Saatvik Agarwal, 16, and Vignan Pattamata, 14, from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, who will join 14 other student astronauts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The paper said the American Planetary Society had been impressed by essays written by the Indians on how they would use the two Mars space probes, named Spirit and Opportunity.

Spirit and Opportunity are due to land on opposite sides of Mars in January. Each of them is carrying an all-terrain robotic exploration vehicle called a rover, laden with tools, instruments and electronic gear destined to provide a clearer-than-ever portrait of the red planet's surface.

SPACE.WIRE