NASA Chief impressed by Indian Space facilities

Bangalore, May 9: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator Michael Griffin today had a good word about the Indian Space capability and said he would carry it home to ease sanctions on some of the Indian space entities still in the US Banned list.

''I will certainly carry a good word home'' Dr Griffin said when asked by a newsman whether his visit to the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) at Thiruvananthapuram would enable the US to remove it from the banned list. All the three were involved in rocket technology.

He was speaking to newsmen after inking an Mou with ISRO for providing two US payloads to the Chandrayaan-1 Mission planned for an early 2008 takeoff.

VSSC along with the Liquid Propulsions Systems Centre and the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota continued to be in the banned entities list of the US after certain relaxations were made last year.

The lifting of the ban has helped India import some of the critical systems from the US, Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G Madhavan Nair said.

Referring to the more than four decades of Indo-US space cooperation Dr Griffin mentioned that it had been marred by sanctions and some other reasons.

Dr Griffin was the first NASA Administrator to visit India after over three decades. He looked forward to have an opportunity to see first hand India's impressive space facilities and to learn more about the operation of India's launch vehicles, satellites and control stations. He also mentioned that he had an opportunity to mingle with some of the Indian space scientists who had graduated along with him.

Stating that NASA was honoured to be a participant on the maiden lunar mission of India, Dr Griffin said ''the mission you will conduct some 40 years after humans saw the moon up close for the first time, will greatly advance our understanding of our closed neighbour in space and represent a very impressive technical achievement''.

He said the two-year mission of Chandrayaan-1 to map the lunar surface and investigate its surface properties would advance knowledge about the moon's history and evolution and inform future exploration decisions by characterising the content of lunar soil.

Terming the Indian effort to upgrade its technological capability to undertake planetary research as ''commendable goals'' Dr Griffin said ''it is my hope and belief, that as we extend the reach of human civilisation throughout the solar system, the US and India will be partners on many more technically challenging and scientifically rewarding projects''.

Replying to a question, he said NASA would consider participation in Indian space programmes on a mission to mission basis taking into account the safeguards in place. On other question of the US commercially exploiting the launch capability of India, he said the issue had to be discussed at the level of the governments.

Mr Nair, speaking on the occasion, said the inclusion of US instruments had added further fillip to the Indo-US cooperation in the space arena which dates back to the very beginning of the Indian Space Programme. ''ISRO looks forward to several more cooperative missions as we have always believed that 'together we can achieve more' and with significant achievements made in the field of astronauts it is more advantageous to share each other's capabilities and the resulting scientific outputs'', he added.

Referring to the June 2004 Indo-US Conference on Space Science, Applications and Commerce held here, he said a Joint Working Group was set up to enhance the cooperation in civil space between the two countries. The first meeting of the JWG was held here last year and the second would be held later this year.

Mr Nair and Dr Griffin said the two space agencies were looking forward for complimenting the efforts of each others to avoid duplication of work and resources.

Dr Griffin said building on over four decades of productive and mutually beneficial space cooperation ''I see great potential for NASA and ISRO to expand our partnership in the future as we realise the potential of space activities to benefit our people and to extend the horizons of commerce, science and exploration''.

He said data from the two US instruments onboard Chandrayaan-1 would contribute to NASA's increased understanding of lunar environment as it implemented the Vision for Space Exploration, Which calls for robotic and human exploration of the moon's surface.

Among the two US payloads, Mini Synthetic Aperture Radar developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University under NASA funding would help detect water in the permanently shadowed areas of lunar polar regions. The other instrument, Moon Mineralogy Mapper, jointly built by Brown University and Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA would help in characterisation and mapping of minerals on the lunar surface.

Mr Nair said the primary objective of the lunar mission was to investigate the distribution of various minerals and chemical elements on lunar surface besides high resolution three dimensional mapping of the entire lunar surface.

Chandrayaan-1 would be launched into a 240 Km x 24,000 km earth orbit by a PSLV and subsequently the spacecraft's propulsion system would be used to place it in a 100 km polar orbit around the moon.

Besides the two US payloads the other foreign payloads included three from the European Space Agency and one from Bulgarian Academy of sciences. The Indian payloads were A terrain mapping camera, a hyper spectral imager, a high energy x-ray spectrometer, a lunar laser ranging instrument and a moon impact probe.

Mr Nair expressed hope that the maiden moon mission would make significant contribution to the international scientific community and complement the efforts made so far in understanding earth's closest neighbour.

UNI