India launched successfully Wednesday its first unmanned mission to the moon, the rocket Chandrayaan 1, which carries Bulgarian-made space equipment on board.

The launch took place at Sriharikota about 80 km from city of Chennai. With it, India has now joined the USA, the former Soviet Union, the European Space Agency, and its Asian neighbors China and Japan as the countries that have sent missions to the moon.

One of the eleven payloads that the Chandrayaan 1 rocket carries was made in Bulgaria's Solar-Earth Influence Laboratory of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, which is based in Sofia.

The Bulgarian-made payload is RADOM - a 256 channel spectrometer of the absorbed space radiation known internationally as "Lyulin".

During Chandrayaan 1's two-year mission, "Lyulin" is going to read the quantitative and qualitative measures of the radiation fields of galaxy and sun rays at 100 km above the moon surface.

The data from the Bulgarian device will be used to estimate the radiation risks for austronauts future missions. The first data is expected around November 10-15.

The Bulgarian "Lyulin" was selected for the Indian mission in a competition with the participation of 32 countries. It cost about BGN 60 000, and has a weight of 98 grams, and a size of 11 by 4 by 2 cm.

Bulgaria's Solar-Earth Influence Laboratory is currently working on three new space devices of the "Lyulin" type. One of them is expected to be placed on board of the Russian space station Fobos-Grund in 2011, whereas another one will be used for an experiment on the International Space Station in 2009.

Of the remaining ten payloads on Chanrayaan 1, five were produced in India, two - in the USA, and one each in Germany, the UK, and Sweden.

"I congratulate the entire ISRO community on this momentous occasion. I would also like to congratulate the space agencies of USA and Bulgaria as well as the European Space Agency who have contributed to this mission", reads the message of India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the successful launch of Chandrayaan 1, which is published on the website of the Press Information Bureau of the Indian government.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!