NASA radar aboard Chandrayaan-1 finds ice on moon's north pole

A NASA radar aboard India's maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 has detected craters filled with thick deposits of ice near the moon's north pole, the US space agency said on Tuesday.
NASA's Mini-Sar experiment found more than 40 small craters, ranging in size from one to nine miles, containing water ice.
"Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice," the space agency said in a statement.
The radar's findings "show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought," said Paul Spudis, lead investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.
The Mini-SAR has spent the last year mapping the moon's permanently-shadowed polar craters that are not visible from Earth, using the polarization properties of reflected radio waves.
"After analysing the data, our science team determined a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit," Jason Crusan of NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington said.
Chandrayaan-1 was India's contribution to the armada of unmanned spacecraft to have been launched to the Moon in recent years.

'India's manned moon mission by 2020'

India would be able to send a manned mission to the moon by 2020,

while the second unmanned spacecraft would be ready by 2012, said
a top space
scientist who was involved in the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1.

"If everything goes as per the plan, we will be ready to send a man to moon by 2020," said Jitendranath Goswami, director of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad.

PRL is the laboratory that helped build a payload called the high energy X-ray spectrometer that will look for water ice in the polar regions of the moon. Goswami, who hails from Assam, was Saturday interacting with students, journalists, and academics, in Guwahati.

"Maybe in 50 years from now, there will be an alternate space to live in Mars," the space scientist said. Goswami said he felt proud to be part of the historic moon mission and spelt out other programmes in the pipeline.

"As a scientist I have miles to go," Goswami was modest in his reply to a question as to how he felt being part of Chandrayaan-1. "But we're not in any great hurry. We're hoping to get data (from Chandrayaan-1) for a long time."

He stressed on the need to help children get attracted towards science and space technology by urging parents to do something inspirational. "Parents and guardians can inspire their children to achieve something in life," Goswami said.

Towards a manned space flight after the successful moon mission

India’s successful maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 has given a big boost to the ambitious plan of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to undertake a manned flight by 2015.

The latest Annual Report of the Indian Space Department says that India’s manned flight programme envisages the development of a fully autonomous orbital vehicle capable of carrying the crew members.

The Indian manned capsule which is expected to weigh up to 4 tonnes is being planned to be launched by means of the heavy lift-off GSLV (MK-III) vehicle now.

It is being envisaged that an advanced astronaut training facility will be set up by ISRO in collaboration with the Bangalore-based Institute of Aviation Medicine (IAM) for the training of astronauts. The training centre will cover 100 acres will be set up on the outskirts of Bangalore.

The follwing main facilities would form the part of this  training centre are a radiation simulation chamber to help astronauts handle radiation from the sun; a centrifuge to enable manoeuvers in space, a zero gravity simulator as well as hardware designed to train astronauts fly their spaceship.

The final approval of this Rs 12, 0000-million manned flight programme is awaited from the Union Government.

A third launch pad will be developed to have the facilities such as crew escape module. Meanwhile, it has been planned that two Indians will fly onboard a Russian spaceship to the International Space Station (ISS) before the indian manned mission. For this, India and Russia have already set up a joint working team to study the finer details of training and flying Indian astronauts.

It is envisaged that the selected astronaut candidates will be trained in the Russian Star City and this exercise will help India gain an insight into the intricacies of astronaut training.

ISRO believes that India’s manned space flight is a crucial step towards the future plans to ISRO to send a man to moon.