India to carry NASA payloads aboard Chandrayaan-1

Indian Space Research Organization has signed on a MoU for placing two US scientific instruments on board ISRO’s lunar craft with the US Space Agency NASA.

The Chandrayaan-1 two-year orbiting mission is slated to begin in 2008 and would help NASA as it struggles with lack of funds and too many missions in hand. They are also struggling with the safety of the Space Shuttle fleet and they are due to launch a mission in the coming months.

The agreement was signed on between ISRO Chairman, Mr. G. Madhavan Nair, and the NASA Administrator, Dr Michael Griffin.

The two chiefs added that the two space organizations had potential to work jointly on non-duplicating, cost-saving and data-sharing projects and they are discussing such projects.

Dr Griffin would be visiting two of the three remaining US-blacklisted “entities” in India. These include ISRO’s rocket making facility of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram and the launch pad, the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.