India adds itself to the space race and sends a mission to the Moon
India has become this dawn (Spanish hour) the third Asian power in sending a mission to the Moon, after their rivals China and Japan did. The takeoff has taken place successfully from the bay of Bengal. With the conquest of the terrestrial satellite, India reaches a symbol of development technological, economic and to be able.
The Indian mission Chandrayaan-1 - that means lunar ship in sánscrito- almost just arrives a month after the first Chinese space stroll and five years after that Asian giant sent his first manned ship.
Nevertheless, this one is a great jump in the Indian conquest of the space. The country has been perfecting its own technology, that it almost initiated of homemade way in the Sixties and that until 10 years ago were limited to construct their own satellites and to put them in orbit.
“The last decade we entered strong the commercial scope and have sent a total of 16 international apparatuses, of as different origins as Germany, Argentina or Korea”, counts by telephone Sridhara Murthy, chief of a main directorate of the Antrix Corporation, the commercial section of the ISRO. At the beginning of year it was sent most controversial of all, a spy satellite of Israel, reason why New Delhi underwent forts critics of the international community headed by Iran.
Now the challenge is that the Chandrayaan-1 surpasses more than 384,000 kilometers than they separate the Earth of the Moon and that it enters his orbit next the 8 of November. According to the official version, its main objective is to make a map of three dimensions of the topographic characteristics and the chemical composition of its surface. The Indian interest to study the possibility of extracting helium 3 has raised great controversy.
India is also initiating an international race to seize of that combustible key for the nuclear fusion. Although now the fusion is not available commercially, it thinks that it could be more ahead and than the Moon it could contain much more amount of helium 3 that the Earth. “In the future it could be a clean energy source and is one of the objectives of our mission”, indicates a spokesman of the ISRO.
India is the third Asian country that arrives at the Moon, but arrives by far less money. Compared with the 141 million Euros that his cost to lunar China first test and 363 million to Japan, the 60 million India seem few. Also, according to Futron, a high tech consultancy, has used them to India of effective way. According to a study of this year, India is only a little by back China in space competitiveness. And Japan, Canada and Israel were very behind.
“We must stretch the money to the maximum and to remove the best thing and so we have”, says the civil servant of the ISRO. For many, the work of this Indian agency of the space has been the form to take, by means of satellites, education and health to remote villages, as well as to try to fight against the natural disasters.
Nevertheless, the voices do not need critics within India against the space program. “It is a tremendous unnecessary cost of money in a country where there are million people whom they do not have what to eat. Two thirds of the 13,500 million Euros destined to science are being used in activities ligatures to the military research, beyond 22,500 million dedicated to the defense”, says the prestigious political analyst Praful Bidway.
But in India no critic will make diminish the hope to become a superpower, now also in the space.
Source: www.elpais.com
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