The Hindu : Front Page : Chandrayaan-1 a space-age enterprise: Kapil Sibal

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Chandrayaan-1 a space-age enterprise: Kapil Sibal

P.S. Suryanarayana

“The moon mission is a demonstration of our scientific prowess and of our being a member of an exclusive club”

SINGAPORE: Hailing Chandrayaan-1 as a space-age “enterprise,” Union Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said “the mission to the moon should not be looked at from an economic standpoint.”

Asked about the economic ‘viability’ of the ongoing project, Mr. Sibal said here on Thursday “there are some things that benchmark what Indian excellence stands for.” In fact, Chandrayaan-1 was carrying an American scientific “payload.” And, it was “not just the Americans” in this category.

Mr. Sibal said: “We are the fifth country in the world now to reach the moon — hopefully, that will happen on the 10th of this month. For the first time, we are exploring the northern polar region of the moon, [something] never done before. Our [scientific] resolution levels are better than at any time by any launch in the past. So, it is a demonstration of our scientific prowess, [of] our being a member of that exclusive club. We are now going to launch, in 2012, Chandrayaan-2.” And, as part of Chandrayaan-1 itself, “there is a module [the Moon Impact Probe] that will land.”

The Minister was answering questions at a meeting organised by the Singapore-based India Business Forum (IBF), under the auspices of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). India’s High Commissioner to Singapore S. Jaishankar and CII-IBF Chairman Girija Pande were among those who participated in the interactive session.

Delivering a “Global Business Leaders Lecture,” Mr. Sibal portrayed Chandrayaan-1 as the “exciting” story of India’s rise on the global stage. Nonetheless, there was another side to this story.

“You have got [in India] a polity which is somewhat fractured. And, you have an eco-system of innovation which is ready to erupt and a political system which is ready to disrupt.”

However, India was “not a dysfunctional state,” he clarified at an interactive session, moderated by Vijay Iyengar, the Chairman of Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry, and Tan Tai Yong, the Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies here.

Related stories:

Chandrayaan takes pictures of moon

Chandrayaan 1: In depth

Chandrayaan-1 gets closer to moon

How Chandrayaan-1 is raised to higher orbits

Chandrayaan-1 bound for Moon

Chandrayaan’s orbit raised

ISRO can put an Indian into space before 2015”

Off to the Moon: Editorial

Once Chandrayaan goes near the moon, we will be there to track it’

Going boldly where others have gone before

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