UPDATE:
[original post]Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:12:30 +0100 (BST)
From: BBC Breaking News Alert <dailyemail@ebs.bbc.co.uk>
Subject: India launches first moon mission
India successfully launches the unmanned Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft, its first mission to the moon.
For more details: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7679818.stm
A note from a journalist friend:
Live videocast of the launch of Chandrayaan I, the Indian moon spacecraft can be seen starting 8:20 p.m. EDT Tuesday/5:50 a.m. IST Wednesday at:
http://www.isro.org/brodcast.htm More info about the project at:
http://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/home.htm
Here's a September piece by the FT's James Lamont in New Delhi. From "India's Moonshot Salutes Nehru's Legacy":
Peeping out above the trees behind the Nehru Museum in New Delhi is the nose cone of a satellite launch rocket.
The proximity of the shrine to the founder of modern India to a symbol of space travel is no coincidence. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister, wrote about the solar system from his prison cell in the 1930s and, once in office in an independent India, was determined that his country play a part in scientific exploration.
His enthusiasm for space led to meetings with Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut, and Albert Einstein.
It also set India on a path that would see the first Indian cosmonaut in 1984, the loss of Indian-born Kalpana Chawla in the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003 and the launch of countless satellites.
Next month, Nehru’s ambitions for his country will take a form he could only have dreamed of.
Chandrayaan-1, India’s first unmanned mission to the moon, will blast off from its launch site near Chennai. About 10 days after the launch, scheduled for the last week of October, Chandrayaan will drop a probe carrying the Indian tricolour flag on to the moon.
See in-depth coverage at Rediff.com's "Moon Mission" page.
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