Pradeep's Space Blog
on my journey in getting people off the planet

Looking Ahead: India in 2008

India will join another space club of luinar explorers this year with the launch of Chandrayaan in April this year. This is to be followed up with the launch of Chandrayaan-II in 2012.By 2020, India wants to land a man on the moon.

India's engineering developments in 2007certainly pointed in this direction with the cryogenic rocket testing, successful experiment on the Space Re-entry Experiment (SRE) and the establishment of the Micro-Gravity Research Programme (pdf) at the Indian Institute of Science.

Besides this, there are plans for sending an expedition to Mars and sending an Indian into space. It was perhaps to fulfill the latter, that ISRO expressed hope of working with Energia to work on jointly co-developing Russia's next generation space plane

On the student space front, IIT-Bombay had announced that it plans to launch India's first student developed satellite in 2008.

SEDS-India, the SEDS national chapter in India has also started working on the Indian Student Satellite (InStuSat) from December, 2007. We also plan to hold our second national conference after the successful completion of the SEDS International Conference at VIT in September, 2007.

Planetary Society, India has also been working on completing on its moon rover competition and is likely to get the student models placed in ISRO Headquarters.

The Student's Chapter of Astronautical Society of India also opened its first chapter in Hyderabad in December, 2007.

Hopefully, 2008 will be a great year for Indian space enthusiasts!!

Posted at 06:09PM Jan 07, 2008 by Pradeep in Space in India  |  Comments[3]