by Playfuls Staff |
31st December 2006
India will launch a space capsule in early January as the first step towards a plan to launch a moon mission, news reports said Sunday.
The 50-kilo capsule will be brought back [more] after 15-30 days' orbit round the earth, the Indian Express newspaper reported.
The capsule is expected to fall somewhere in the Bay of Bengal off India's eastern coast and will be recovered by the Indian navy.
The exercise is aimed at testing re-entry and recovery technology which will be a crucial part of the moon mission, officials at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said.
ISRO announced in November that it plans to send an unmanned mission to the moon by March 2001.
The capsule will be launched by the space launch vehicle PSLV C7 that will also put into orbit an Indian satellite and two others from Indonesia and Argentina.
© 2006 DPA
