Chandrayan - Now with a purpose

In 2003, India announced its mission to Moon.The then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said a Moon flight would showcase India's scientific capabilities.India considered funding this space program to be a matter of prestige.The mission was named Chandrayan and planned to execute it in 2008 or so.Now in Dec 2008,ISRO has added one more objective to its mission, Possibility of bringing Helium-3 to Earth and use it for energy production.The advantage behind the Helium-3 is its non-radio active behaviour due to the presence of 2 protons and 1 neutron[instead of two].So the fuel from it will be environment friendly.Earth has very minute amounts of Helium-3 in natural form.Whatever is available now,comes as a byproduct of other chemical reactions.When it comes to Moon it exists in abundance in the topsoil of the moon, where solar winds from the sun have deposited it for billions of years.A rough calculation says 30 metric tons of this isotope of Helium could generate as much electricity as the United States consumes in one year.Millions of tons of this isotope is available on the Moons surface.

With most of the fossil fuels nearing extinction ,USA,Russia and China have already realised the importance of this resource and have expressed their interst over this untapped resource.USA made a step forward and showed signs of establishing a reactor on the Moon's surface to extract the Helium-3,before to is sent to Earth for use.Just a few kilograms of fuel could produce gigawatts of electricity.Now India wants to utilse its Chandrayan trip to explore the possibility of utilising this invaluable resource.With this India too joined the race with USA,Russia and China for Helium-3 on the Moon.Hope the research will yeild positve results.