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Chandrayaan: a giant leap for Indian private firms
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 10 January 2008, 02:22 IST
Bangalore: When India undertakes Chandrayaan, its first unmanned moon mission in 2008, it would be some private Indian firms shining in the limelight. Many bigger as well as smaller Indian firms have been powering India's ambitious space program, which is being super wised by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), reported The Economic Times.
The firms in support of the program include big corporate houses like the Tatas, Larsen & Toubro and Godrej and many smaller companies like Walchandnagar Foundry (Satara, Pune) Venkateshwara Engineering (Coimbatore) and Shoma Industries (Bangalore).
"Private players have a 30 percent share of the total project cost of Rs 386 crore," said M Annadurai, the project director of Chandrayaan. Over 40 private players are involved in the production of the Chandrayaan, he added.
Chandrayaan will catapult ISRO into the big league, and help it break into the orbit of space exploration. While the craft will go round the moon over a two-year period, a probe will land on the lunar surface to conduct tests, and transmit information. India hopes to have astronauts in orbit by 2014.