By Alex Rivero
News Editor, ‘09

The Republic of India has announced that it is taking measures to put Indian astronauts on the moon by the year 2015, starting with a £1.7 billion plan for research and development.
Quickly becoming, if not already enjoying the status of being, one of the most important nations on earth, India, with a population of over one billion, will attempt to put two people into orbit 172 miles above earth’s atmosphere for seven days.
The nation’s cabinet, technically speaking, is still in the process of determining whether the bill will be passed, although the process at this moment is seen more as a municipal formality than a genuine debate. The decision comes after its October launch of the country’s first unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, which is currently orbiting the Moon and putting together 3-dimensional maps of its surface. The mission won India a pass into the world’s most elite club whose only other members – Japan, Russia, the United States, and China – are the only countries capable of independently reaching the Moon.
Chandrayaan-2, the country’s second unmanned mission, is scheduled to be launched in 2011.
The Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) has been lobbying for years to secure government funding for space missions by 2014, eleven years after the Chinese, and to the Moon by 2020, four years before China’s target date. Considering that 76 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day and malnutrition in some parts of the country is on par with sub-Saharan Africa, critics are finding clear reasons – and many supporters – in calling the whole space project a waste of much-needed money.
ISRO counters that India makes money from its largely commercial satellite launches. Officials argue that the scientific research from the space program has greatly aided its information technology industry.
Indian officials are constantly keeping track of Chinese space advancement. The People’s Republic of China completed its first successful space walk last year.
A senior fellow on the Asian Military Affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center said a week ago that the Indians needed to immediately go over their space program to confront a possible military threat from China, citing the possibility of having the Chinese conducting military activities from the Moon.
The Indian government increased its overall budget this year by 27 percent to 44.6 billion rupees, 1.75 billion of which will be spent on training science personnel. The change constitutes a 73 percent increase in spending from last year in the same field.