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New Delhi: India will launch a locally built rocket for the country's first unmanned mission to the moon on October 22, the head of the project said on Tuesday.
"If at all there is any delay, it will be because of the weather, otherwise I don't foresee any technical difficulties," M. Annadurai said.
The launch, earlier scheduled for April but delayed due to technical difficulties, has been given a window between October 20 and October 28 for take-off from a southern India town.
Six countries, including the United States, are directly involved in the project, which will cost an estimated Rs3.86 billion (Dh296 million). It aims to map a three-dimensional atlas of the moon through high-resolution remote sensing and map the surface's chemical and mineral composition.
Despite limited funding, India operates an extensive space programme consisting of launch vehicles, satellites and data-processing centres. India plans to send an astronaut into space by 2014 and a manned mission to moon by 2020. As part of preparations for that, it launched four satellites on a single rocket for the first time in January 2007, including one that was brought back to earth.
Commercial venture
India's space programme was launched as a scientific research effort, but has now begun to make money from commercial launches.
At least 16 Indian satellites orbit the earth, supporting telecom TV broadcasting, earth observation, weather forecasting, remote education and healthcare.
India's constellation of seven earth-observation satellites is the largest of its kind in the world, but its space programme lags behind China, which in 2003 became the third nation after the US and the former Soviet Union to launch a man into space aboard its own rocket.
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