It feels great to state that India, at the moment, is among top five nations in space technology and owing to repeated successes, India (emboldened and also self-reliant) is firm to send a manned mission to space in 2015. There is no doubt that this noble land of ancient civilizations and knowledge has already made its presence felt in the global arena by sending a moon mission Chandrayaan -1 a few months ago.

However, as per scientists (both of India and abroad), the successful experiment of Chandrayaan-1 has not only made the nation proud but it has also made India advance towards earning the coveted membership of the elite league of the nations with expertise in space technology. It is to be noted that India is only the second nation besides China from the third world to have successfully launched a moon mission.

Who were the earlier members of the club then? They included United States, Russia, Japan and France. But none of them has the success which India has gained. India works amazingly with a very small budget if compared with the budgets of other countries (in the realm of space technology).

Bear in mind that Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) had a scanty budget of Rs 380 crore for Chandrayaan-1. For similar moon missions, the budget of US and other countries was several times higher than that of ISRO.

The success of Chandrayaan has been a milestone for a developing nation like India that has not received much scientific assistance from the west. But this has made ISRO more definite and it is firm to carry out more investigations. It has already made it clear that the Indian lunar mission is not an exercise in reinventing the wheel. Chandrayaan-1 is striving to unravel the hitherto unknown features of the moon for the first time.

What do you think therefore? India, if truth be told, has come a long way from the humble beginning of its space journey in 1963 with the launch of a 9-kilo rocket from a research facility at the fishing hamlet of Thumba in Kerala and it will go on to attain further successes.