Europe to help India with lunar probe

PARIS, March 22 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency has agreed to help India's space agency mount Chandrayaan-1, its first unmanned mission to the moon.

The ESA Council, at its March 17 meeting in Paris, approved unanimously an agreement with the Indian Space Research Organization to launch a satellite no later than 2008.

The Indian mission will lift off from the European spaceport in French Guyana. The remote-sensing satellite will orbit the moon at an altitude of about 62 miles (100 kilometers) and will be designed to search for water ice and map the lunar surface in detail.

Chandrayaan-1 will carry several instruments provided by the ESA. In return, India will provide the space agency with all the data collected by the instruments.

The satellite is expected to have an operational lifetime of about two years.