'Chandrayan I' to be launched on April 9: Madhavan Nair

Hyderabad, Sep 27 (UNI) India's first unmanned Lunar mission 'Chandrayan I' will be launched from Sriharikota Space Centre on April nine, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair said today.

Addressing a press conference here, Mr Nair said the ''Chandrayan-I'', designed to study Moon's topography, had been integrated with advanced tools and the scientists engaged in the mission were conducting pre-launch demonstrations.

''The ISRO will launch 'Chandrayan-I' on April 9. If anything goes wrong before the launch, the scheduled time will be changed,'' he said.

Stating that the total cost for the unmanned Moon mission was about Rs 380 crore, he said NASA and other space agencies engaged in Moon mission had provided technical support to the ISRO.

Earlier, ISRO Scientist M Annadurai, delivering a lecture on 'Chandrayan-I Mission to the Moon' at 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC-2007) here, said the inter-satellite communication would begin immediately after the mission lands on moon.

He said 'Radom', a system brought from Bulgaria to measure radiation environment both in the Lunar orbit and enroute to Moon, was installed in the mission.

The other tools 'Mini SAR', developed by the USA, would detect lunar polar water ice , 'CIXS', brought from UK would study chemical mapping and 'SIR-2' of Germany would study the mineral mapping on Moon, he added.

UNI