New Delhi

India has announced that it will send an unmanned satellite to the Moon by 2008 — but observers are divided over the wisdom of the US$100-million project.

The mission, called Chandrayan-1, was first mooted by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 1999. It will put a 525-kilogram satellite in polar orbit 100 kilometres above the Moon's surface.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee gave the mission the go-ahead during his Independence Day address to the nation on 15 August. His speech was made as China prepares to steal a march on its Asian rival by sending a manned spacecraft into orbit this autumn.

The ISRO claims that the project has the overwhelming support of India's scientific community. Jayant Narlikar, former director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Pune, says that it offers an important “intellectual challenge” to the country and will result in technological spin-offs that will benefit society.

But not everyone agrees. D. Raghuraman, a physicist at the non-profit Delhi Science Forum, says that the mission is a “luxury India can hardly afford”. And Roddam Narasimha, director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, says that India would be better off doing lunar exploration as part of an international collaboration. He thinks that India should concentrate its attention on what is happening on Earth.

Chandrayan-1 will map the chemical composition of the entire lunar surface, and produce a three-dimensional atlas of regions of interest. In a statement, the ISRO said that the mission is a forerunner for other planetary missions, including “landing robots on the Moon and visits by Indian spacecraft to other planets in the Solar System”.