NEW DELHI – The first lunar probe from India landed successfully on the moon Friday, the Indian Space Research Organization said.
ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair said cameras on board have been transmitting images of the moon back to Indian space control, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
Chief among the lunar mission's goals is mapping not only the surface of the moon, but what lies beneath.
If successful, India will join what is shaping up to be a 21st century space race with Chinese and Japanese crafts already in orbit around the moon.
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The unmanned moon mission was launched from the Sriharikota space center in southern India on Oct. 22. The box-shaped lunar probe carried a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer.
The video imaging system was intended to take the pictures of the moon's surface, the radar altimeter was to measure the rate of descent of the probe to the lunar surface and the mass spectrometer was for studying the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.
The Moon Impact Probe was one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, a space agency statement said.
To date only the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China have sent missions to the moon.
As India's economy has boomed in recent years, it has sought to convert its newfound wealth — built on the nation's high-tech sector — into political and military clout.
The moon mission comes just months after India finalized a deal with the United States that recognizes India as a nuclear power and leaders hope it will further enhance its prestige.
In the last year, Asian nations have taken the lead in moon exploration. In October 2007, Japan sent up the Kaguya spacecraft. A month later, China's Chang'e-1 entered lunar orbit.
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