NEW DELHI: India yesterday rejoiced at joining an elite club by planting its flag on the moon as the countrys space agency released the first pictures of the cratered surface taken by its maiden lunar mission.
A probe sent late Friday from the orbiting mother spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 took pictures and gathered other data India needs for a future moon landing as it plummeted to a crash-landing at the moons south pole, said Indian Space Research Organisation spokesman B R Guruprasad.
The TV set-sized probe, painted in the green-white-and-orange colours of the Indian flag, made a precise-to-the-second landing on the lunar surface, the ISRO said.
Politicians across the spectrum buried their differences to hail the milestone in Indias space history in which the nation joins Russia, the US, Japan and the European Space Agency in successfully landing moon probes.
Today is a historic day for India, said Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress Party. Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Krishna Advani called it an event to be recorded in golden letters.
Former president and rocket scientist A P J Abdul Kalam said the landing of the probe which coincided with the anniversary of the birth of Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru will kindle a dream in children.
In 15 years I want to see an Indian on the moon, said Kalam, who conceived of the so-called moon impact probe, or MIP, and is popularly known in India as missile man.
The media was similarly ebullient. The tricolour has landed, trumpeted the Hindustan Times daily in a banner headline, referring to Indias flag. The Indian Express newspaper said: India touches the moon.
Indias first lunar mission began on October 22 when a rocket transported Chandrayaan-1 into space. Chandrayaan the Sanskrit word for moon craft is on a two-year orbital mission to provide a detailed map of the mineral, chemical and infrared space heater topographical characteristics of the moons surface.
The landing of the probe is a step towards landing an unmanned moon rover by 2012. ISRO also plans to launch satellites to study Mars and Venus.
Critics say India, which has hundreds of millions of people living in deep poverty, should not be embarking on a space race with starstruck regional powers like China and Japan.
But the country has been keen to display its scientific prowess and space saver spare claim a bigger slice of the global satellite business.
Not only has India put our national flag on the lunar surface, we have also emerged as a low-cost travel agency to space, ISRO chief Madhavan Nair said, referring to the space missions total $80mn price tag which is less than half spent on similar expeditions by other countries.
ISRO says its moon mission would help it achieve international brand recognition for India as a serious player in space.
As Indias economy has boomed in recent years, it has sought to convert its newfound wealth built on the nations high-tech sector into political and military clout. The moon mission comes just months after it finalised a deal with the United States that recognises India as a nuclear power, and leaders hope the mission will further enhance its prestige.
But while the celebrations conjured up images akin to that of the US flag unfurled on the moon by Apollo astronauts, Indias flag is most likely scattered over a wide swath of the moons Shackleton crater after the probe slammed into the surface at more than 5,000km per hour.
The violent landing was planned and Indian scientists hope to study the images and data sent back by the probe during its 25-minute descent to prepare for a future soft landing, ISROs Guruprasad said. It carried a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and inflatable space shuttle a mass spectrometer.
The video imaging system took pictures of the moons surface, while the altimeter measured the rate of descent of the probe and the mass spectrometer studied the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.
Guruprasad said the pictures that were released were raw images and that scientists had not yet analysed the information sent by the probe.
India began its space programme in 1963, developing its own satelliteslaunch vehicles to cut dependence on overseas agencies. It first staked its claim for a share of the global commercial launch market by sending an Italian satellite into orbit in 2007. In January, it launched an Israeli spy satellite. -Agencies
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