Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Missions to moon:

With India’s big leap into the league of countries aiming for the moon via its Chandrayan program, I was exploring the web to look into the history of mankind’s attempt to touch our only natural satellite. The complete history is given in the following link from NASA website.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunartimeline.html

Some interesting observations:

Russia started the lunar race in late 50’s. USA finally overtook them and landed the first man at the moon in 1969 10 years after it all started. USA stopped most of its work in 1972 after its Apollo-17 crewed landing. USA is the only country to have people landing in the moon (having done it 7 times).

Japan entered the race with “Hiten” flyby and orbiter in the 90’s. The European space agency did a lunar orbiter in late 2003. China followed it with a lunar orbiter in October 2007. India did it in October 2008 one year after China.

India thus joined the elite group of nations to leave their mark with journey towards the moon. Well that’s what makes me extremely proud.