Chandrayaan 1, India's First Lunar Probe Options

[ljk4-1]

Chandrayaan Lunar Mission Will Carry NASA Payload

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Chandray...SA_Payload.html

Bangalore, India (SPX) May 1, 2006 - ISRO has agreed to carry two NASA research
instruments aboard its Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, the Indian lunar-orbiting
mission planned for launch next year, The Hindu newspaper reported Sunday.


ISRO Pushing For Indian Satellite Industry

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/ISRO_Pus...e_Industry.html

Bangalore, India (SPX) May 1, 2006 - ISRO is looking to jump-start an Indian
satellite industry by inviting prospective domestic contractors to work with the
agency until they can develop independent manufacturing capabilities.

[elakdawalla]

I dropped in this evening on a social event being held in connection with a Cassini project science group meeting, and chatted with a scientist who's working on one of the American-contributed instruments. He was very pleased the launch went well, of course, and I said something like "Well, India's already proven they can do launches; I didn't worry too much about that, but I'm glad the spacecraft is on its way." He shook his head and said that the mission was so bent on getting Chandrayaan-1 launched on the stated date that although they went through all the testing -- shake and bake and so on -- that after they were done with the shake test they buttoned the thing up and shipped it off to the launch site before they had even analyzed the data from the prelaunch testing. They were in too much of a hurry to look at the data. Another scientist laughed and said "Well I guess as long as nothing fell off during the shake test they figured it was okay." Still, kind of scary! The first scientist said it's just about two weeks to orbit "and then the fire hose opens up" in terms of data.

--Emily