Word: mission
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...regain China's fu qiang (wealth and power), dignity, international respect and territorial integrity. In this regard, Mao and the CCP positioned themselves squarely with a deep yearning among Chinese - thus earning their loyalty and the party's legitimacy. His successors have not wavered from this singular vision and mission. (Read "Where China Goes Next...
Chandrayaan-I was launched last October; the ISRO lost contact with it in late August. At the time, critics questioned the program's worth and the need for future missions. But ISRO scientists say they simply underestimated the radiation levels the probe and its communication system would face, problems they will now fix. The water discovery was vindication that they had got a lot right and the hiccup, said chairman Nair last week, was all part of a normal learning curve. The ISRO, Nair told reporters, is "100% satisfied with the mission's objectives." (See the top 50 space moments...
Even getting this far has been an achievement itself. A lunar mission has been consistently opposed by sections of India's political and scientific community ever since it was proposed in 1999. Critics question the logic of a country battling dire poverty spending millions of dollars on scientific pursuits that they liken to reinventing the wheel. They said the ISRO should stick to socially relevant research as it did after its establishment in 1969: launching satellites for landscape and resource mapping, weather forecasting, or communications and educational broadcasts...
...agreed to an ambitious moon program. Then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who approved Chandrayaan-I at the Independence Day function on August 15, 2003, said he wanted India's space program to become one of the best in the world. Supporters of the program argued that a lunar mission would provide untold technological spin-offs. Many of those same enthusiasts now say they have been vindicated. Operating a satellite at a distance ten times beyond anything they had done before has given the ISRO valuable experience in hi-tech spacecraft, rocketry and advanced remote navigation technology. At $79 million...
...ISRO now wants to land a craft on the moon by 2013 and has reaffirmed its commitment to sending a mission to Mars by 2015. ISRO wants to garner a larger share of the increasingly competitive commercial satellite launch market. On Thursday, it launched six European and Turkish satellites from its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. "[The] returns, in terms of the science, the technology, inspiration, stature, prospects for international cooperation... are immense," K. Kasturirangan, former ISRO chairman who conceived Chandrayaan-I, told TIME before the launch. It doesn't hurt that the country's celebrating...