India and Russia plan for joint trip to Moon

The countries of India and Russia have signed an agreement to jointly develop a research-and-exploration mission that will orbit and land on the Moon, probably around 2011 to 2013.

The agreement was officially signed in Moscow, Russia, on Monday, November 12, 2007, by Anatoly Perminov, director of the Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA), and Gopalan Madhavan Nair, administrator of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

It was announced by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Vladimir Putin while Singh was discussing various national interests at the Kremlin. The space agreement would extend out to the year 2017.

The lunar lander/rover will be headed up by the Indian ISRO, while the lunar lander, which will include a scientific laboratory and moon rover, will be the charge of the Russian RKA. Both the orbiter and lander/rover, called Chandrayaan-2, would be placed into one payload to be launched by a Indian geostationary satellite launch vehicle (GSLV).

Currently, Russia, by itself, is working on an unmanned mission to the Moon, Luna-Glob, scheduled for departure in 2010. A second mission, in unison with India, will target a Lunokhod unmanned rover onto the Moon's surface in 2011.

India is working on its first lunar probe, the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter, which is scheduled to be launched in April 2008.