Chandrayan II faces landing woes

“Ensuring the safe landing of the rover on the surface of the moon is an obstacle at present in case of Chandrayaan II. The moon does not have an atmosphere and utilising parachutes is not possible. So we are exploring other alternatives. The project should take off by 2013,” said Nair.

He claimed even the Mars mission could suffer a modest setback due to the paucity of qualified manpower and enough scientific ideas.

Nair said that ISRO would also launch a geostationary satellite to cater to the Indian Meteorological Department’s (IMD) weather monitoring system. “The satellite will help in reading cloud shifts and changing monsoon patterns. We will hand it over to IMD after its launch. We expect this project to be ready in another two to three years,” the ISRO chief said.

The organisation is looking at increasing the revenue from carrying spacecraft from other countries after the successful launch of PSLVs. Almost 15-20 per cent of ISRO’s revenue comes from carrying spacecraft from other countries. The nodal space research organisation of India is already in talks with US for launching their satellites.