Late last year, ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair had announced that India expected to accomplish a manned space mission in 7-8 years and would undertake its manned moon mission by 2020.

And in January this year, M Annadurai, project director of Chandrayaan-I, said the successful launch of Chandrayaan-I last October had given space scientists the confidence to undertake a manned mission to the moon.

He said the Chandrayaan-II mission was expected to be undertaken within a couple of years and would be followed by Chandrayaan-III. The Chandrayaan-I mission, he said, was sending considerable amount of data and scientists were busy analysing it.

According to Annadurai, several countries have approached India to set up a common lunar research centre for conducting studies.