Chandrayaan - India foray into the space race

Oct 22nd was a landmark in the space history of India. Chandrayaan, an unmanned lunar exploration spacecraft, was launched with 5+6 payloads to study the moon's surface. Over the next 2 years, the remote sensing satellite intends to study the lunar surface for visible, infrared and xray frequencies to produce a complete 3 d map topography of the moon.

China's first manned mission in 2003 triggered the second international space race (the first one was between USSR and USA during the cold war). China, having completed the space walk and now planning to launch a space station has become the third space superpower. It is in response to the chinese program that India has prepared and launched its maiden space mission to put an object (beyon the gravity of earth) to orbit the moon.

This step can be seen a India's first step into the global league of space faring nations.
Benefits
1) Shows off the strategic capability as an emerging economic and military power on the world stage
2) Morale-boosting social benefits
3) Commercial use of statellite launching technology.
4) potential military applications.

Cons:
Most people do not see the benefit of diverty rs 200 crores to a space mission when the country has high levels of poverty. I feel that though India has high levels of poverty, though the scientific benefits and the knowledge and expertise gained from this mission will not be immediately apparent, the returns will eventually be more and aimed at improving people's lives. In fact, when India' first planned to put satellites to orbit the earth, there were similar questions. But that operation immensely helped India as India is now oen of the largest operators of remote sensing satellites and also places satelites into orbit at a very low cost as compared to other nations. So there is a huge commercial benefit.

The commerical statelltie launch business estimated to be arnd $2billion and this will enable India to get a larger share of this pie. Last year, India put an Italian satellite on space for a fee of 11 million dollars.

Mission
The satellite is currently orbitting the earth in an elliptical orbit. On saturday november 8th, additional velocity will be given to the spacecraft to enter the lunar orbit. Once this is done, the spacecraft will be slowed down so as to enable the gravity of the moon to capture it into an elliptical orbit. It also carries a Moon Impact probe that will be sent to the surface of the moon. This is done to qualify technologies required for future landing and to prove that an object can be sent to the pre selected location of the moon.