Click to play videoIndia's maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, by finding water on the moon, was “more then hundred percent successful” in its mission and with it the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has proved it is at par with the developed countries.
ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair told this to CNN-IBN in an interview on Friday. “An Indian mission has shown to the world excellent science and planetary exploration, but also it has been a real example of international cooperation,” said Nair. (Excerpts from the interview)
CNN-IBN:When the Chandrayaan-1 mission had to be aborted halfway (on August 30), there appeared to be a palpable disappointment among the ISRO scientist. You had said that it had achieved 90 percent of its objectives but with the data analysis through are you pleasantly shocked?
G Mahadavan Nair: We had indication about signature of water molecules in February itself. Since then we have been very closely working with NASA scientists for a revisit of some of those locations and also trying to point the spacecraft to the moon. That way, we had a wonderful opportunity working together with NASA scientists.
When we had to terminate the Chandrayaan moon mission, I was not disappointed because, first of all, it reached the moon itself and made 11 instruments work for 312 days, it was a phenomenal success. And after looking at the volume of data that we have received, it still added to our confidence.
But today, when we have led this historic discovery of water on the lunar surface, I can say that the mission was more than hundred percent success and we are completely satisfied with what we have achieved.
CNN-IBN:What does finding water on the moon mean to India and to rest of the world?
G Mahadavan Nair: First of all, some of the fundamental concepts about the moon--its origin, and type of minerals --have been rewritten with this discovery. Secondly, in the long run, when we are thinking of colonising the moon for either robotic or manned colony on the moon, the presence of water becomes very important element.
Of course, today, we cannot say that we can extract the water and use it for practical purposes, but once found in adequate quantities we will be able to use it for human survival and also as a fuel for converting to hydrogen and oxygen and as rocket fuel for intra-planetary travel and so on. In the long run, it is definitely going to benefit mankind.
CNN-IBN: What does it mean for ISRO right now? What is the way forward? Can it independently handle lunar explorations now?
G Mahadavan Nair: ISRO had this confidence for quite sometime. We have shown to the world that we can build spacecrafts, whether it is for communication, airspace observation or science mission.
We can launch them with our own rockets like the PSLV and GSLV. That way we are at par with the developed countries as far as space exploration is concerned.
All these years our priority has been to use space technology for solving the day-to-day problems of man and society but at the same time we set aside a small fraction of our resources for planetary exploration.
And the culmination of that was Chandrayaan. We are extremely pleased with the outcome of the Chandrayaan. Not only an Indian mission has shown to the world excellent science and planetary exploration, but also it has been a real example of international cooperation.
CNN-IBN: How is it that water is present on the moon? Has the analysis of data been done?
G Mahadavan Nair: Earlier the belief was that the water could have come only from meteoroids and got deposited in the polar region and embedded into it. But the (Chandrayaan) finding reveals that there could be another process, by which the hydrogen, which is coming to solar rims, could interact with some oxygen-bearing minerals and that forms hydroxyl (one oxygen atom attached to one hydrogen atom) as well as other molecules.
So this is really a new finding and gives a lot of ideas for the scientists to further dig into how the moon is formed and how it is evolving and so on.
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