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| Moon beyond Karva Chauth | | | | Early this week thousands of Indian women gazed moon as a part of annual cultural ritual. This is not the only reason that moon is important for this country of a billion. India has thrust itself into a place in the lunar space with the successful launch of its spacecraft from Sriharikota on Wednesday. The country has proudly joined an elite club of six nations which have sent exploratory missions to the moon, manned or unmanned, and signed itself off as a major space-faring power. The trail blazed by the PSLV rocket which lifted the Chandrayaan-I satellite brightened the hearts of all countrymen weighed down by the gloom of violence and an economic downturn and reassured the nation of its ability to go forward even in the most challenging areas of human endeavour. But the Rs 400-crore bill of passage to the moon is not just meant for a massage of the national ego but will bring returns for the country and the world at large with the information the spacecraft collects about the moon in the coming two years of its travel around the earth's satellite. Apart from satisfying the the natural curiosity about the universe around us, which was the driving force for man in his progress through millennia, the Chandrayaan-I will provide data about the moon which will be useful for us in a time of depleting resources on earth. The mission is expected to map the moon for a clearer understanding of its terrain on the nearside and the farside, look for the presence of water ice and distribution of minerals in it and study the chemical composition of its rocks. The results will be important for future plans about how to make use of the moon for the welfare of people on earth. The countries that successfully explored the world some centuries ago later led it and this might turn out to be the case with space explorations also. The success in reaching the moon should lead to bigger achievements also, like a manned mission to the satellite and a more ambitious travel to Mars, for which the ISRO is already making plans. We join the entire nation in congratulating the scientists and engineers of the ISRO who made the mission a success. Countless hours of dedication, hard work and intelligence have gone into the effort and they can rightly be proud of their achievement. ISRO has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1962, and through setbacks and successes it has grown into the nation's premier scientific and technological organisation, finally turning the poet's darling into the scientists' dish for experiment. We move forward when imagined worlds become real and when imagination seeks out new territories for reality to catch up with. |
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