India recovers space capsule after test

India’s space agency said on Monday that an orbiting capsule had been successfully returned to Earth, marking a major step toward the development of a highly prized human spaceflight program.

The capsule was blasted into space as one of four payloads on Jan. 10 from a launch pad 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of the southern city of Chennai. It splashed down in the Bay of Bengal 11 days later, boosting plans for a lunar mission in 2008.

“(It) landed in the Bay of Bengal ... as per schedule. The mission is a great success,” said A. Subramoniam, head of the team that designed and built the capsule at the Indian Space Research Organization. “This mission is a steppingstone to design and build our very own reusable spacecraft, and eventually (carry out) manned missions into space, too.”

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Coast guard boats had already fished the capsule from the sea, another scientist said.

Though India has for years been building communication and remote-sensing satellites, this was its first foray into deploying reusable spacecraft, joining an elite club led by the United States, Russia, China, Japan and France.

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The success of the mission is a morale booster for Indian space scientists who are busy preparing for the country’s first unmanned lunar mission. The spacecraft, Chandrayaan 1, is due for launch in February 2008, powered by a locally built rocket.

India hopes to put an astronaut into space by 2014 despite limited funding for its fledgling program.