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With Chandrayaan 1 on the launch pad for a Wednesday dawn liftoff, the space agencies of five countries will be watching along with host India and praying for success for the country’s most ambitious scientific space expedition yet.

The cuboid-shaped spacecraft will lift off from Sriharikota spaceport of the Indian Space Research Organization, in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. With ten instruments on board, the spacecraft is designed to orbit the moon for two years, mapping the lunar surface, searching for water in the form of lunar ice, and studying the mineral composition of the moon, as well as assessing the lunar body’s radiation environment.

If all goes as planned and the spacecraft settles into its lunar orbit over 368,000 kilometers (over 228,000 miles) from earth, it may even mark a site on the moon for India. The spacecraft is carrying a special fabricated vehicle containing instruments that will crash-land on the lunar surface, conduct an impact study and search for prospective landing locations for a manned lunar craft.

For India and the ISRO, which has worked more than nine years on Chandrayaan I, the mission is by far its greatest leap yet. The country has been involved in space exploration, riding piggy-back on spacecraft from other countries – mainly Russia, the United States and France – since the mid-1960s, and lately graduated to launching its own spacecraft. But its space program until now was limited mostly to launching communications and other satellites into Earth’s orbit, with its extraterrestrial ventures limited to operating at a distance of about 38,000 kilometers (23,000 miles).

“Chandrayaan I is a major leap from the existing level of activities,” said Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, former chairman of ISRO and the first to propose the idea, back in 1999, of taking India’s space program beyond the launching of satellites. This mission is a whole new ball game. It involves managing complex equipment at a distance that makes even radio signals reach earth with time lags.

Yet, while all agree that this mission is a big deal, one cannot help but ask if this journey to the moon is a repetition of space programs that other countries have already accomplished over the past 40 years.

ISRO’s response is that the objectives of Chandrayaan I are well defined and go deeper than past moon missions. “This mission is unique because of several new features of scientific observational capabilities not achieved by any previous mission,” said Kasturirangan in his first official chat session.

According to him, the instruments of this spacecraft are capable of mapping the topography of the moon at a level of precision far higher than has been done before. That will improve the understanding of the gravitational field of the moon and throw light on other aspects too. This mission will also seek to find “unambiguous answers to the presence of water in the form of ice,” he said.

It is also relevant that this mission, with an outlay of less than US$80 million, cost half the global norm for a similar space trip. But, according to Kasturirangan, its most important aspect – for India at least – is that it will try to locate helium-3 on the moon. It is believed that this gas, considered one of the cleanest fuels, is available in abundance on the moon, but is sparse on Earth.

“Space programs globally are trying to access the abundant natural resources on the moon and it is a significant aspect of India’s space program too,” said a spokesperson from ISRO.

But does India, or any other country for that matter, have the wherewithal to pipe helium-3 back to Earth at a reasonable cost?

“Certainly helium-3 exploitation on the moon is a far-fetched idea,” admits Kasturirangan, adding that it would take decades to overcome the hurdles of transporting the gas back to Earth. “As and when the possibility of exploitation of lunar materials becomes feasible this could be an important consideration,” he added.

Nonetheless, according to Rakesh Sharma, India’s first astronaut, “This exploration has something more immediate for the country.” For one, Chandrayaan I takes India’s relatively nascent commercial space program – the business of launching satellites – a step ahead; this mission has grabbed payloads from NASA in the United States and from the space agencies of Germany, Britain, Sweden and Bulgaria.

Secondly, this mission opens the opportunity for “space process outsourcing” for the country. According to S.K. Shivkumar, director of ISRO’s Telemetry Division, Chandrayaan I has led to the development of a 32-meter dish antenna, an engineering marvel that can tap satellites millions of miles away. The antenna, installed near Bangalore, is the nearest powerful antenna to the equator and is most useful for deep space missions.

“Naturally we expect that this antenna could be hired by NASA or the European space agencies for their moon or Mars missions,” said Shivkumar.

Above all Chandrayaan I is about national pride. “In many ways it tells the world that India has arrived and if other countries can do it – send missions to the moon – India can do it too,” said Sharma. “Considering that other Asian countries, like China and Japan, are pursuing lunar missions, it is important that India has a similar mission too.”