NEW DELHI/BANGALORE, 5 January 2003 — India plans to send a manned mission to the moon sometime between 2005 and 2015, a senior space research official said yesterday.
“In a few months from now, there will be a review of our plans for a lunar mission. We would first send an unmanned flight around the moon,” said Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, head of the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO.
Kasturirangan made the announcement in a speech to the Indian Science Congress. He did not give further details.
ISRO builds satellites and launches them from either its own facility on the southeastern coast or from launch pads abroad.
Kasturirangan said India’s latest launch vehicle can put satellites weighing up to 2,000 kg (4,400 pounds) into a geostationary orbit, in which a satellite remains above the same spot on earth.
Future developments will enable the launch of satellites weighing up to 4,000 kg (8,800 pounds), he told the conference of scientists in Bangalore, the country’s technology hub.
Earlier, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam told scientists from India and abroad to initiate a global force to protect the world’s space assets. He said no conflict should spill over into space.
“We must recognize the necessity for the world’s space community to avoid terrestrial geopolitical conflicts to be drawn into outer space thus threatening the space assets belonging to all mankind,” he said.
“This leads on to the need for an international space force made up of all nations, willing to participate and contribute, to protect world space assets in a manner which will enable peaceful use of space on a global cooperative basis without the looming threat of conflict on earth,” Kalam said.
“I am sure, India would contribute its best to the creation and sustenance of such an international force,” he added.
Before he became president in 2001, Kalam was nicknamed the “Missile Man” for his close association with the nuclear and space industries.
He was head of the country’s ambitious Integrated Guided Missile Development Program to develop an array of weapons, including short-range, medium-range and ballistic missiles.
More than 2,000 Indian and foreign scientists attended the Space Summit which was inaugurated by Minister for Space Vasundhara Raje.
Kalam also issued a call to initiate a global movement for a “common minimum global space mission” to address the impending crises for energy, water and minerals.
“Such a mission needs to have a 50-year perspective for international cooperation but more importantly the summit may identify an immediate strategy for change and action plan to move forward,” he said.
He said a bitter price war was on to capture the global satellite market since the market for information satellites was rapidly shrinking.
“Currently, the global space industry has a capacity to launch over 200 tons of satellites every year. However, the forecast demand will consume less than half of this established capacity,” he said.
