U.S., India Team Up for the Moon

"Indian and U.S. space agencies Tuesday signed an agreement to put two U.S.-made scientific instruments on board of Chandrayaan-I, India’s first unmanned moon explorer, in 2008, Indo-Asian News Service reported:

NASA will put one mini synthetic aperture radar (Mini SAR) and moon mineralogy mapper (M3) on board of Chandrayaan-I, according to the agreement.

"The objective of SAR is to detect water in the permanently shadowed areas of lunar polar regions, while M3 will map the minerals on the lunar surface and study its characterization," [Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairperson G. Madhavan] Nair said.

Chandrayaan-I will be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota in southeast India’s Andhra Pradesh, by an advanced polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV), into a 240-24,000 km earth orbit and placed subsequently in a 100-km polar orbit around the moon, with its own propulsion system.