Beijing: India

Minutes after the launch of Chandrayaan-1 at Sriharikota, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G. Madhavan Nair spoke to Managing Editor Raj Chengappa about its importance and India

PSLV lifts off with Chandrayaan from Sriharikota on October 22
There could

On October 3, Mylswamy Annadurai, the mission director, Chandrayaan-1, is visibly tense. The spacecraft, moved out the previous day from the laboratories of the isro Satellite Centre in Bangalore, is being transported at 20 kmph by road to the spaceport in Sriharikota, some 300 km away. Annadurai is tense because a local newspaper has gone and splashed the picture of the convoy on its front page.

Bangalore, September 18 Come November 8, India

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will launch Chandrayaan-I, India's maiden mission to the moon, in September.

In an interview on the sidelights of a seminar here on Thursday, the chairman of Isro, Mr G. Madhavan Nair, said that the final tests have been on to launch the spacecraft to moon.

The Chandrayaan-I will be launched atop a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), India's workhorse rocket with a streak of nine consecutive flawless missions.

It might be a rather tiny piece in an ambitious mission but without a semiconductor chip, a satellite or any other communication device cannot transmit or receive data. Though developed Western countries have imposed complex restrictions on the supply of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) chips to India, a Defence Research and Development Organization lab has, despite US sanctions, developed and supplied GaAs devices for military and space technology purposes.