India has successfully launched its first lunar probe. Chandrayaan-1 is scheduled to reach lunar orbit November 8 to begin a two year mission mapping the lunar surface. Before that mapping begins, however, a subsatellite will be sent to the surface, giving India's space agency experience landing on the Moon.
Chandrayaan-1 carries 11 experiments, including some from ESA and NASA. It also joins probes from China and Japan already in lunar orbit. Add to those various private efforts to send unmanned probes to the Moon, Space Adventures' offer to send a private space traveler around the Moon, NASA's plan to launch an unmanned probe to scout out a location for a manned lunar base, and the interest expressed by various nations in participating in an international lunar base program, and the next two decades could see humanity finally and permanently established on another world.
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