MUMBAI, DECEMBER 18 Sometime in 2007-2008, a cuboid-shaped spaceship will rocket into space from Sriharikota, to orbit the moon for two years.Officially, this Rs 384-crore project is not a landing mission.

But new calculations are on for Chandrayaan-1—India’s first moon voyage—to also land an estimated 25-kg gear on the dry, dusty lunar surface.

‘‘We are discussing a proposal to include an impactor, as part of the spacecraft, to be released from the spacecraft to land on the lunar surface,’’ G Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told The Sunday Express over e-mail from Bangalore.

But Nair also clarifies: ‘‘There is no change in the mission. Chandrayaan-1 is an unmanned scientific lunar orbiting mission, not a landing mission.’’

Scientists say the little impactor might land us a big pointer for a series of future missions under debate.

‘‘How accurately the impactor will land could be a technological trial for future soft landings,’’ says N Bhandari, senior scientist at Ahmedabad’s Physical Research Laboratory, and member of the Chandrayaan-1 science advisory board.

  Mapping the moon  

In a first, Chandrayaan-1 will map the Moon’s topography with a 3D terrain mapping stereo camera capable of imaging the lunar surface in black and white. Useful, because ‘‘future developments on the moon will need an accurate base map,’’ says George Joseph, chairman, Chandrayaan-1 science advisory board. India’s other lunar objectives: • Study origin, evolution, mass concentration of Moon • Chemical, mineral composition of Moon • Search for Helium-3 as potential energy resource • Probe trapped, frozen water • 10-15 kg payload of foreign experiments

Bhandari says the impactor would travel at an estimated 1.5-2 kms per second. ‘‘I don’t think it will survive the impact. It will crash on the surface, but it could tell us whether we can land on a target.’’

Chandrayaan-1 will explore the moon at a height of 100 kms from its surface. It will map its entire terrain, searching, among other goals, for frozen water, Helium-3 as an energy source and clues to its evolution. Word has spread of the new baggage on the voyage, which coincides with America’s next moon odyssey (2008)—a precursor to a US Mars exploration. ‘‘Echoes of the Chandrayaan lander impact will tell us a lot about the interior of the moon,’’ says Manuel Grande, group leader, planets and magnetospheres group, at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, shortlisted for an experiment aboard Chandrayaan-1.

‘‘This would be especially interesting if the mission overlaps the Japanese mission to place a seismometer on the surface,’’ says Grande, frequently in telecon with Bangalore scientists. ‘‘Chandrayaan-1 will carry new instrumentation, better than what has gone before.’’

‘‘I have great expectations,’’ says Paul Spudis, planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland (USA), which has been shortlisted too, for an experiment to map ice deposits at the poles of the moon. ‘‘Indian scientists, active in space science for years, are highly respected,’’ says Spudis. ‘‘The more data we get, the better.’’

In the global race to the moon, China has planned a robotic landing and a manned mission. Japan has planned two unmanned missions this decade. The European Space Agency’s SMART-1 spacecraft recently arrived in lunar orbit.

Our space programme is not about competing with other nations, says Nair. ‘‘We have our own agenda. Despite several moon missions, including manned US missions, the origin of the moon is not fully understood.’’

The theory that the moon originated after a catastrophic collision of the Earth with a Mars-sized body over three billion years back is yet to be proved, says Nair.

Now the baseline configurations of the spacecraft are defined, scientific instruments are selected and work is on for a Deep Space Network Station (wort Rs 100 crore) near Bangalore to communicate with Chandrayaan-1, which will be over three-and-a-half lakh kms away, circling the moon.

In Ahmedabad, George Joseph, chairman of Chandrayaan-1 science advisory board, and associated with the project since conception, says he doesn’t know details of the impactor experiment but adds: ‘‘We are looking at future technology.’’

Decades from now there will be human habitation on the moon, he says. ‘‘India should be in the forefront of that endeavour.’’ ‘‘We have no plans for manned space missions at present,’’ Nair affirms.