India To Test Space Capsule As Part Of Moon Mission

MOON DAILY

The Bay of Bengal. The ISRO will splashdown their new capsule here.

by Staff Writers
New Delhi (AFP) Jan 03, 2007
India plans to launch a capsule into orbit early next year and bring it back to Earth, an initial step towards an unmanned mission to the moon by 2010, a news report said Sunday. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which has said it hopes to send an unmanned probe to the moon in the next three years, has said it needs to test its re-entry and recovery technology, the Indian Express report said.

The agency will launch a 50-kilogram (110 pound) capsule and then have it re-enter and splash into the Bay of Bengal after 15 to 30 days of orbit around the Earth, the newspaper said.

The announcement is the latest by India's space agency that show an expansion in policy from projects meant to aid national development to a growing interest in space exploration, the report said.

The space agency also said last month that it planned to send an unmanned mission to Mars by 2013 to look for evidence of life.

The six-to-eight-month mission, would cost three billion rupees (67 million dollars), the Hindustan Times reported.

Source: Agence France-Presse

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MOON DAILY

True Fakes As Scientists Make Simulated Lunar Soil

Huntsville AL (SPX) Jan 01, 2007
Life is tough for a humble grain of dirt on the surface of the Moon. It's peppered with cosmic rays, exposed to solar flares, and battered by micrometeorites--shattered, vaporized and re-condensed countless times over the billions of years. Adding insult to injury, Earthlings want to strip it down to oxygen and other elements for "in situ resource utilization," or ISRU, the process of living off the land when NASA returns to the Moon in the not-so-distant future.

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