Indian Moon Mission to Have Landing Component

Anil Kandangath writes "Last month, it was announced that the Indian moon mission Chandrayan I would have a component that would land on the moon to function as an impactor. For all those who complain about India spending big bucks on its space program, The Scientific Indian has a list of updates about the space program's plans for this year which includes two cartography satellites, a satellite based 'total disaster management system', a few communication satellites and a satellite launch for the European Union."

Comments

Re:Competition

[meringuoid]

things have been sour between India and the European Union (specifically, UK)

Not for a long time... India and the UK had a bit of a rocky divorce, true, especially with the whole partition thing, but they've got on very well since then. Have you seen how many fighter jets the Indians buy from the UK? And how many vindaloos the English devour?

ESA is separate from Arianespace, so European missions fly on rockets of all nations. Mars Express was launched on a Russian rocket, Huygens piggybacked on an American probe... A lot of European satellites do fly on Ariane rockets, Ariane being a very cost-effective option, but there's no exclusive contract going on.

You're probably right that the EU and India might be interested in closer cooperation, though... India wants to become rich, and an increase of trade with the EU would certainly help; meanwhile, the EU is already enormously rich, but doesn't have the global influence to go with it in the way the USA does. Alliance between Europe and India would certainly help both.