NASA interested in Indian moon mission

Rediff ^ | February 26, 2005 17:04 IST | Rediff

[CarrotAndStick]

The National Aeronautics Space Agency is in talks with the Indian Space Research Organisation to place its scientific instruments on the Indian spacecraft that will be sent on an unmanned mission to the moon in 2007, ISRO officials said in Bangalore on Saturday.

"We have also got interest from NASA to place their payload in our moon mission," ISRO Satellite Centre Director P S Goel said.

Indian plans to put a 525 kg orbiter using its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, 100 km over the moon.

ISRO had allotted 10 kg and 10 watt of power for space agencies of other nations and had invited bids, which evoked 15 responses from 10 nations including from NASA, Germany, Bulgaria, Britain and Sweden, he said.

Goel said the US space agency was very keen to provide mini-synthetic aperture radar and spectometre with 0.3 micron to 0.9 micron capabilities.

"We have begun discussions with them, but its implementation will depend on the bilateral agreements between India and US," he said.

ISRO had invited presentation on projects from five nations -- US, UK, Germany, Bulgaria and Sweden -- for final approvals in December 2004 at the lunar conference in Udaipur.

Goel said ISRO had selected the Bulgarian payload of radiation monitoring equipment in the spacecraft and two more payloads from European nations.

[sukhoi-30mki]

Huh??????????Dude,India & China have been rivals for over 40 years.India's rocket programme has primarily been indegnious with a bit of initial help from the US & Canada & later the USSR,while China recieved a lot of early help(till the mid-60s) from the USSR.

PS-SLVs today look pretty much the same everywhere.By your logic,a good number of American SLVs must be copied from Russian ones-afterall,they were the first to launch satellites.

[Cronos]

They do look very much like Chinese designs:

By no means do they look alike.

However America can keep few secrets from India anymore. They now have tremendous access to American intellectual property, engineering schools, libraries, corporate data bases, medical records, customer lists, you name it. And they now have billions of US dollars.

ANd you think America shares her data on missile building with INdia???? Dream on.

[festus]

At what point will you break out into a rousing chorus of Kum Ba Yah ?

[Cronos]

Probably as soon as soon as you start singing It's a long way to Tipperary.

[SunkenCiv]

could have sworn this appeared on FR last year, when a US undersecretary or somethin' visited India?