India aims for Mars after dumping lunar mission

by Stevie Smith - Aug 31 2009, 15:30

According to G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), India’s space-faring ambitions are moving ever forward and, despite the recent scrubbing of its lone scientific lunar mission, the country is aiming to have successfully landed a mission on Mars by 2015.

News of India’s planned mission to the Martian surface comes hot on the heels of ISRO officials dumping the Chandrayaan lunar research mission after controllers inexplicably lost contact with the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, the country’s only satellite in orbit around the Moon.

According to the ISRO, radio communication with Chandrayaan-1 was severed early on Saturday morning, leaving the craft beyond the reach of scientists at a mission monitoring station in Byalalu, 30km southwest of Bangalore.

“We are studying the telemetry data and trying to figure out what is the problem,” commented ISRO spokesman S. Satish in an Associated Press report before the plug was officially pulled on the mission.

Space experts believe the satellite may have been exposed to a potentially fatal burst of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun, which experienced a significant sunspot activity spike during this past weekend.

Launched in October of 2008, the Chandrayaan-1 satellite was approaching the halfway point of its scheduled two-year mission. Despite the unfortunate termination, the ISRO has been keen to stress that Chandrayaan-1 had completed some 95 percent of its mission objectives.

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