On 22 October ISRO shot into space a Rs 400 crore rocket into space carrying eleven specialist scientific payloads on a historic rendezvous with the earth's most-celebrated poetic fancy and satellite, the moon. And on 14 November, it successfully placed the green and white cuboid satellite into a 100 km lunar orbit, a feat achieved by only five other nations before India. It dropped the lunar orbit and also placed the Indian tricolour, demonstrating to the world that it has more brain power than sports power (so what if we don't win many Olympic golds?)

The Chandrayaan Mission catapulted India into the super league of nations and organisations such as NASA and ESA that do frontline research in space to study the evolution of the universe from the big bang.

India also established colonisation rights on the moon after the United States, Russia and a few other nations. The moon is free property for the entire world. But for how long? Because there will come a time when earth's resources reach a crunch phase and the advanced nations start to mine minerals from the moon - India will establish its right then.

Sixth nation to launch lunar mission

India is the sixth nation to launch a lunar probe mission. And India is the first nation to launch a mission to the dark side of the moon, the side we never got to see. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Madhavan Nair said it is the beginning of a new era in Indian space research. It is also the culmination of a long and arduous journey in space research from the days of Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India's space programme. Satish Dhawan, UR Rao, Dr Kasturi Rangan, Col Pant, Dr Vasant Gowariker, and not to forget, the illustrious APJ Abdul Kalam, have carried the baton.

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Geo Stationary Launch Vehicle (GSLV) have now become the workhorse of the Indian space programme. The PSLV launches near- earth satellites for varied research programmes and the GSLV is the platform for launching communication satellites.

After decades of hard work and research the Indian space programme has entered a new commercial phase where it will be able to sustain its programmes from the money it generates from paid launches. After NASA and ESA, India is perhaps the third to undertake paid launches of satellites, and carry commercial and scientific payloads of even advanced countries like Germany, Italy and others.

More ambitious missions to follow…

Indian space programme has the Chandrayaan 2 mission on the anvil to be followed by the ambitious manned space flight to the moon when it hopes to repeat what the United States did in 1964, make astronauts walk on the moon and drive a buggy around just as the world's first astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did. And that mission for 2012 is billed as the most expensive programme for India at Rs 12,000 crore or $ 2.46 billion; even by western standards it is a mind-boggling figure for a single mission.

Following its success, ISRO has on the drawing board a space mission to Mars at a time when the NASA is planning a manned space mission to Mars. The space programme, which went into limbo for the Russians in the late 1970s and after some mishaps for the NASA, was revived in the 1990s following the discovery of traces of water and hydrogen on the lunar surface during one of the earlier missions. Faced with energy shortage, the discovery of helium 3 gave the world the visions of a new fuel, right now the rocket fuel.

Look for details on Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of ISRO that hopes to earn a revenue of Rs. 1000 crore this year in our report in Industrial Economist October 2008 issue.